They Followed Me Home
by Laryna6
Summary: Noblesse AU. In which the Lord of the Nobles goes looking for the traitors who forced two of her loyal clan leaders into Eternal Sleep and accidentally becomes Werewolf Lord. Now she has two species to look after. Pity that going on strike is inelegant.
1. Chapter 1

"Enough!" ordered the Lord, letting her power slip enough to shake the castle around them, in lieu of shaking her clan leaders by their necks. Raskreia reined herself in once all of them had properly knelt before her. "It is my responsibility as Lord to plot a course for the future of our race, and I will _not_ accept a future set by the precedent that traitors can slaughter my people with impunity!"

Ludis and Rajak looked at each other. "Lord," Ludis said, "It's our duty as clan leaders to handle matters like this for you. If the Lord takes the field personally, it means that we have failed."

She bit back the words 'two of you _have_ failed' to come home. When they had _children._ Those traitorous scum had killed the parents of _children_ who had not even reached their majority. No, they had made it very clear that they considered _all_ of her loyal clan leaders children, and yet they had forced two of them into eternal sleep. "Ludis, you are the Guardian of the Sanctuary as well as the Shield of the Lord. Karias must remain here to sense any attempt to invade Lukedonia. With Rousare in Eternal Sleep, Gejutel will have command of the Central Order Knights," for _now_. Not only was he friends with _him_ and more of _them,_ but he seemed too calm in the face of his own child's eternal sleep. Yes, he would have seen many forced into eternal sleep before, but that was the only reason she wasn't using this opportunity to probe his loyalties and thus gain the precedent that she could, in order to guard Lukedonia against future traitors. "I will take Kei Ru and Rozaria Elenor as my escort."

"Where, my Lord?" Kei Ru asked.

She frowned, showing her displeasure at the idea that she might just wander aimlessly. She was _Lord_ , the wisest of the nobles, they should respect her intelligence more than that. "The land of the Werewolves. They still live in human lands: the human organization will not have left them alone. If they do not have some clue to the whereabouts of the traitors, then they should at least know something of the human organization, and I will wrest the information from _them."_ Tradition might not permit her to read the minds of clan leaders, but werewolves and humans were not nobles.

"If none of them have anything useful, I will return here," she said, to mollify them.

"When do we depart, Lord?" Rozaria asked, and Raskreia nodded to her in approval.

Raskreia stood up. "Immediately. We will not give the traitors time to prepare." Or Gejutel the opportunity to warn them. He remained genuflected, hand at his chest.

"But Lord," Ludis tried to protest.

"You are the future of Lukedonia," Rajak said, not daring her wrath by looking up.

"Silence!" When they obeyed, she reassured them that, "The future of Lukedonia is not as fragile as the traitors think. _I_ am not as fragile as they think. Does anyone _else_ wish to voice an opinion?"

"Lord," Gejutel said, looking up and wiping a tear from his eye. "If your father could see you now…" He cleared his throat to gain control of himself as the younger clan leaders looked at him. "It is her right and duty as Lord to sentence to eternal sleep anyone who dares to disrespect her Authority, for to damage the Authority of the Lord is to bring ruin upon the nobles. Yes, it does bring dishonor upon the clan leaders for her to be forced to act personally, but what honor do we have left, when half of us failed to give our Lord the proper respect?" He shook his head. "Ludis, our Lord has every right to force you into eternal sleep personally for the way you have opposed her will."

Was this some plot to curry her favor, or had Rousare's eternal sleep turned him against his old friends? In any case, she needed to shut him up: she had spent centuries getting her clan leaders to voice their opinions. How else was she supposed to know what was going on in their heads when she was not allowed to read their minds? It was that silence and secrecy that allowed so many traitors to slip her father's watch. "Ludis Mergas has a duty to ensure Lukedonia's safety, even if it risks being forced into eternal sleep, and Lukedonia is safest with its Lord and clan leaders here."

Gejutel nodded, in a way that was half-bowing his head. "Yes, Lord," he said, somewhat embarrassed at the correction, but mostly satisfied.

"Rozaria, Kei Ru, follow," she ordered, and swept her cloak behind her, striding from the room before she had to deal with any objections or worries. Kei Ru also had a duty to protect her, while Rozaria preferred to stay close to her: she had counted on neither of them objecting once she chose them as her escorts in fear of being told to remain behind.

* * *

Obviously a Lord could not go petition the Werewolf Lord in his own castle, so she landed on the edge of the island. "Kei," she ordered. "Go to the Lord of the Werewolves and tell him that I am here." She did not need to tell him to send her the response: he would want to be certain she was prepared.

"Yes, Lord," he said bowing, after a glance at Rozaria. Her fighting style worked best with distance and prepared ground: with her staying with the Lord, Kei Ru could be certain that the Lord would be well protected from any escort the Werewolf Lord brought with him, while Kei Ru was the best able going among unknowns.

A responsible Lord would come immediately, to give her what she wanted so that she would go away as fast as possible. This island was volcanic: they could lose their entire homeland, and certainly all they had built, if a noble Lord lost their temper here. However, the Previous Werewolf Lord was well known to be both completely irresponsible and a friend of _his,_ while Maduke was the same breed of scum as Lagus Tradio: polite sniveling to her face, undermining her behind her back.

Once she sensed Kei Ru was far enough away, Raskreia turned to give Rozaria her orders.

* * *

" _Lord, Elenor, this werewolf wishes to know what the… young Lord wants from him, and without sending a message ahead."_ Despite Kei Ru's attempt to be properly elegant, barely restrained rage leaked from the message. Clearly, the scum had insulted her now that her father was no longer awake to take steps when she was insulted.

She could not tolerate that disrespect. If scum like this thought her weak, they would force more of her nobles into eternal sleep. "Rozaria."

"Yes, Lord!" Rozaria said eagerly, waving her hands over the staff form of her soul weapon.

Above them, Blood Witch's summoned form fired.

It was unthinkable for the Lord of the Nobles to go as a petitioner into someone's hall, but it was simplicity itself to destroy that hall. Concern for her clan leaders had made her consider warning Kei Ru, but she did not wish to insult him. His soul weapon would protect him, and retreating would make him miss the expressions of the werewolves who had dared mock her in the presence of the Ru clan leader.

The werewolves were still in confusion when she landed with Kei Ru between her and that worm Maduke – a pity the werewolves hadn't overthrown him yet, but it had only been a few centuries. Having his castle destroyed around him, and watching him be completely unable to do anything about the insult, would make the werewolves aware he was not invincible and she could hope they would remove him before the thousandth anniversary of her father's eternal sleep.

To make things clear even to the slower ones, she summoned a blood field.

She heard the werewolves who were standing around uselessly exclaim that she was, "The Lord of the nobles!" and begin to mutter and whisper.

"The Lord of the Nobles," Maduke agreed with a smirk. "So you've dared to leave your island. Not very smart of you to risk another two clan leaders when the last died so stupidly, for mere humans. I do have to thank you: this way the nobles won't outnumber us in the Union. Not that we'll need them much longer. Juraki, Dorant! Time to become Union Elders."

Raskreia drew out Ragnarok, ignoring how the island began to quake around her. The werewolves would think it was a display of power and the clan leaders would think it a sign of her wrath. No one had to know it was a sign of her incomplete control over the power of her soul weapon, but she could sense there were no humans nearby to be caught up in the devastation.

She lowered her blade and flicked out a blood tornado, face impassive.

A pity she couldn't train on Lukedonia without ruining her island, she thought as it engulfed Maduke. His scream as it tore into the ground, carrying him down and down was almost drowned out by the roar of the tornado and the rumbling of the earth, but she could sense his mind as it ceased to exist.

Overkill, especially inside a blood field, but she needed these werewolves to witness her power. Despite her worry about causing a cataclysm, she couldn't allow someone to _survive_ an attack a Lord meant to kill. A lapse in her dignity would encourage more attacks on her people. She almost had to thank Maduke for giving her the opportunity to practice wielding Ragnarok before she faced the traitors.

The tunnel might have reached down into molten rock, but it wasn't too large. There weren't any humans on the island, so she could hope that she'd managed not to kill any. She'd aimed down deliberately to minimize the dust thrown up into the atmosphere.

The werewolves were standing around as she dismissed her sword: after a minute a blue-haired one ran to the edge of the pit left by her blood tornado to look around for Maduke, shielding his face when he was met by a hot blast of air from the depths that ruined his clothing and melted his jewelry to his skin, but wasn't fool enough to go jumping down into the rising liquid rock in order to check.

"No way…" A blond one said, dazed.

"She killed the Lord… that brat of a noble killed the Lord! A noble killed the Werewolf Lord! Kill her! Kill her now!" An old-looking one was the first to recognize reality… Or not, because he was idiotic enough to attack the _Lord_. Kei and Rozaria moved to shield her from his attack.

"Stand aside."

"Lord?" Rozaria raised her other hand to create a second shield as the blue one lunged at Raskreia's back.

Of course she had sensed his decision to attack _inside her own blood field_ , but she didn't want the clan leaders to think she did not consider them capable of doing their duty. They'd endured insults from the traitors along with her.

In answer, Raskreia drew Ragnarok. "Create shields around the battlefield."

When they didn't get it she suppressed an internal sigh. Sometimes she wished she was as foolish as the traitors claimed. It was _very_ difficult to be so much smarter than those around her. She needed to make them understand their will, but speaking the obvious was both excess noise and it would insult their intelligence and undermine their confidence. "There are children and other innocents on this island. They must be shielded from Ragnarok."

As nobles, they had a duty to protect those who could not protect themselves from entering eternal sleep against their wills. That coupled with their duty to _obey her orders_ should override a clan leader's duty… which was not to protect the Lords, they were very capable of protecting themselves, but to ensure the Lords never had a chance to fight personally. Not when humans and even the weaker nobles could not possibly survive if the Lord took the field anywhere near them.

"Of course, Lord!" Kei Ru bowed to ask forgiveness for not executing her order immediately and sprinted for the edge of the battlefield.

Rozaria looked worried for a small second – out of care, not deliberate disrespect – but then teleported to the side opposite the other clan leader.

With the clan leaders occupied generating shields Raskreia permitted herself the liberty of a smile as she turned and flicked another blood tornado at the scum attacking her back. It was one of the Lord's duties to ensure that nobles remained honorable, after all, because so many more were forced into eternal sleep if they were not. It was easier to be honorable if one's opponents were also honorable, according to _his_ companion, and while it irked her to take advice from a law-breaker (blue eyes were forbidden, yet he flaunted them, sometimes even wearing glass to draw attention to them!), she did not mind having a good reason to kill the dishonorable first.

She was glad she'd already regained control over her expression when the blood tornado hit the shield and it flickered like that. She needed to get better at putting less power into her blows, and quickly, or Rozaria and Kei would be exhausted by the effort of maintaining the shields and unable to protect themselves from any werewolves who attacked them trying to escape.

Trying to put as little will behind it as possible, she flicked another attack at an older one, and tched at herself when the blood tornado was twice her height across.

It was no use trying to aim a small attack at someone like that. He reminded her of Lagus Tradio too much for her to entirely suppress the desire to _break him_. He used up a little more of the tornado's power than she'd expected, at least, and there were two more werewolves who dived in thinking he'd survived long enough in there that they could pull him out, so at least some of the attack's power was spent before it hit the shield.

Hmm, that old man was the one who had ordered an attack on the Lord: obviously he had to die, along with the two who had obeyed Maduke's order to attack noble clan leaders. She'd already dealt with the blue one, the blond was… cooperative enough to announce his presence with a summon. That presented a problem: she had no idea how much power would be used up destroying that summon, but at least she could direct her attack under it, and then use her control over blood to change the direction of the attack?

Yes, it was pleasing when reality complied with theory. The blood tornado flew up into the heavens instead of hitting Raskreia or Kei's shields. It would be visible from quite a distance, but while she might feel sympathetic for anyone the human organization killed because of it, right now she had two clan leaders to protect. Losing two clan leaders already was bad enough: to lose four would look like carelessness, and support Lagus Tradio's argument that she was not competent to be Lord.

Perhaps she should practice hitting them with the sword itself for awhile. That would also give her the opportunity to practice her mind control. Not that she couldn't keep up with them if they tried to dodge, but a Lord couldn't flail around. It was inelegant.

She grimaced after cleaving the blond one's body in two. No, she couldn't practice her mind control on these werewolves, she decided, after repeating the experiment on three more in hopes there was some variation among them, like noble clans. Using mind control on werewolves was nothing like using it on nobles, and she couldn't develop bad habits. With nobles, the challenge was the initial breach of their natural defenses: with werewolves, it was child's play to take instant control of them. Any pureblood child could do it. The challenge with werewolves seemed to be that the longer she remained in control, the more time they had to learn how to oppose her power and develop defenses. If she was less powerful then there might be some value in letting some werewolves live long enough for her to figure out what the most common werewolf defense mechanisms were and how to defeat them, but she was Lord. Once she took control over someone's mind, they would continue to breathe only if she allowed it.

Looking around, she saw that none of the others here were strong enough to justify a blood tornado. That was a pity when she needed the practice reining in her power, but she couldn't put Rozaria and Kei Ru in danger because of her inadequacies.

There were almost a dozen werewolves left: they couldn't all rush in at once without hitting each other, and they paused, looking at each other in dismay. "Surrender," she said calmly before they could make up their minds about who would go first, sending the message into their heads as well despite the fact it would make them more difficult to mind control later. She needed the challenge. "And I may allow your continued existence."

Indeed, she was the only one who _could_ allow them to stay alive. They'd all joined in on an attack on the Lord in the presence of two clan leaders: Rozaria and Kei were required to kill them unless Raskreia ordered otherwise.

"You killed the Lord!" one of them raged.

Raskreia said nothing, because that was the natural outcome of Maduke ordering an attack on her clan leaders in her presence. Even werewolves should be able to figure that out, and she didn't wish to state the obvious.

"We'll die before we let a noble dishonor the family!"

"If that is your will," then she was quite grateful. Werewolves might not be humans, but they were still helpless against a Lord, and it was wrong to attack those who could not fight back. That was why the Lords were not supposed to be allowed to attack anyone. However, if it was their _will_ to die, then using a Lord's wisdom to find a way to keep them alive in order to avoid dishonoring herself would be forcing them to go against their own wills, the greatest crime of all.

It was meaningless for them to fight her, but dying to help her get control over her power and protect the nobles was not a meaningless death. That was good, now she had two reasons not to feel guilty about slaughtering them.

Then again, she thought as they charged her, that word, _slaughtering_ … Should she let one stay alive longer so she had more practice fighting them and their deaths accomplished more? No, it would be cruel to give them false hope, and she couldn't let anyone get the idea that werewolves like these _could_ last more than a second against the Lord of Lukedonia.

When her blood field was empty she dismissed it, and Ragnarok.

Her clan leaders rushed to her side, and were thankfully observant enough not to ask if she was alright.

It was a real pity that Maduke was one of the few in there she could justify using a blood tornado on, and it would have been undignified to attack a peon and let him think he had her permission to live after he insulted her like that. She'd thought that at least one of the werewolves would acknowledge her power and surrender so she could permit them to live and answer questions. Now there was no one left in the ruins of the castle that she could ask about the traitors. But, thanks to Kei Ru and Raskreia's efforts, there were still werewolves relatively nearby.

Raskreia's father taught her very little. That was one of the things Tradio used to argue that she was too young and ignorant to do her duty as Lord. The older clan leaders all knew her father wanted _him_ to be Lord, but the reason her father told Raskreia for why he never answered questions until she learned to stop asking them was that it was a Lord's job to figure things out on their own, and she needed the practice.

One thing he had made _very_ sure to teach her was earthquake safety. It was the only time she had ever left Lukedonia before the attempt to train in an area with very few humans that may have frightened the Union enough to attack her clan leaders to force her to stop trying to master her power, in fact. He had shown her the various types of volcanoes and cracks beneath the earth. He wouldn't do anything that even came close to teaching her how to use her power, but he'd had her watch as he let his own power loose around a few of them, until he decided she had observed enough that she could figure out how it worked on her own.

She used those lessons now. The island was smoking a little, but she confirmed again that this wasn't one of the volcano types that would explode, taking the island with it, or darken the sky, taking most of humanity with it. It wasn't a bad idea to leave the mountain burning to remind them that she was not weak, but it would be irresponsible to use Ragnarok again. Unless the werewolves were sheltering the traitors. Which they were not. Pity, that would have been convenient.

* * *

 _In canon Gejutel was of the opinion that the biggest problem with Raskreia as a Lord/the reason the traitors didn't respect her was that she didn't decapitate enough idiots. Of course he's 'yes good' to her deciding to decapitate people in general, although the whole thing with his baby in Eternal Sleep does mae it more so._

 _The way the Union looks down on the young Lord kept Maduke from powering up – he wanted the power trip of being able to kill her with both hands tied behind his back. Whoops._

 _A pissed-off Lord anywhere near a supervolcano would end very badly for the human race. One of the backstory ideas I like playing with – like Raskreia experimenting with her power being responsible for Tunguska – is a pissed-off Lord accidentally caused the Toba eruption approx. seventy thousand years ago. This caused the Lords to remove themselves to Lukedonia, hoping the separate dimension and power-dampening castle would prevent further incidents until hominids became less fragile. They didn't order the rest of the nobles to join them until much later._


	2. Chapter 2

When she took off in search of information, the clan leaders followed her to a werewolf village.

At first glance, it seemed like a reasonable place. Most of the buildings on Lukedonia's shore (the Central Order Knight outposts) were …rustic. Meant to look like structures found on the other islands. That way, human ships that sailed by and caught a glimpse might not realize there was anything out of the ordinary. If the Central Order Knights didn't need to interact with them or alter memories, that increased the odds of the human organization's fleet missing that the ship had gone through the barrier and taking it.

In addition to the beach outposts, the Central Order Knights also had a hospital for treating humans. Because it was their duty to protect Lukedonia's guests, the hospital was kept up to date and the outside had a modern design so that humans could see it was a hospital just looking at it and be reassured that their wounds would be tended. They were often upset as well as injured after a shipwreck.

Seeing from the air a gleaming, well-tended building of the latest human materials surrounded by buildings of wood and thatch, Raskreia had headed there because it looked like the central base of the werewolves responsible for protecting this island's people.

Like the nobles, the werewolves might be in danger from the human organization. Maduke's words implied otherwise, but Raskreia would have to wait until she returned to the throne's power suppression wards before she considered them in detail. She couldn't dwell on something so infuriating as the possibility that her clan leaders were being slain so that someone could join the human organization when she was somewhere people would get hurt.

In any case, the werewolves' equivalent of Ludis needed to be notified that they'd lost their central command and many of their warriors. It would affect their plans for defending the island. The person responsible for preventing the slaughter of the island's inhabitants should also have the sense _not to enrage a noble lord_ , but give her whatever would make her leave the fastest. When the traitors and human organization were the groups most likely to attack their people, they should have some intelligence on them, which added to Rajak's should let her find a target to investigate _that wasn't near any supervolcanos._

Her control over her temper really was deplorable. She'd been working on it for centuries now, of course, but _Seira and Regis were just children_.

…Maintaining her poker face, she hoped that Rozaria and Kei assumed that little shake in the ground beneath their feet was just to get the werewolves' attention. It was odd that no guard had come out to challenge them as soon as they landed. She'd assumed that no one had approached her and Rozaria on the beach because Blood Witch was easy to identify and it made sense to report in rather than approach clan leaders and risk a diplomatic incident, but here? This was a base, there should be a commanding officer.

She looked around. Those shacks were very realistically weathered. Too much for nobles to tolerate, with her people's need for elegance. Her earthquakes had leveled many of them: the werewolves would have to spend a lot of time rebuilding them to make the place look like a poor human village. Werewolves couldn't manifest sturdy matter like nobles could, so by noble standards they would have to constantly build new dwellings. Perhaps this was a village they'd built centuries ago and abandoned to build new homes elsewhere, and their knights had taken it over to use it as camouflage when lost humans ended up here?

Catching the gleam of eyes, she realized that there were people in those shacks. Crowded into them. Why on earth? The werewolves should know about aftershakes. Perhaps they were trying to remove files, and materials, but why would they keep files and materials in there?

And where were the sturdier buildings that were actually in use? Was their barracks in the hospital building? It was quite large, likely to give the illusion that it was used by many people like human hospitals, and it was practical to do something with that space.

"Lord, may I?"

Raskreia nodded and Rozaria floated over the rubble to the nearest intact, if you called something with that many holes intact, building. It was on stilts that came up to Rozaria's knees: she waited at the base of the stairs for the moment to let the people inside compose themselves before walking up to the door and knocking.

With the holes in the wall, it was easy for Raskreia to hear that there was nothing going on inside the building besides breathing that sounded agitated, and a faint sound of distressed protest before someone rushed to open the door. Rozaria had stepped back, so the man was able to shut the door behind him. "Yes, Lady?" he said, bowing, and then realized that he was looming over Rozaria and jumped down to the ground beside her quickly.

"I'm sorry to bother your family," Rozaria said, "but it's about people who were forced into eternal sleep recently."

Something about those words made the werewolf stop cringing away from Rozaria, but then he glanced at the hospital and even without reading his emotions he was obviously terrified of that. "I'm sorry. But you should get out of here. You're not going to get them back. _They'll_ be here soon, and if they fight here…" He trailed off, visibly distressed.

"They?" Rozaria tilted her head, taking advantage of her glasses to make her eyes look bigger.

"The warriors. They'll say I helped you. It's too late for me, but if they fight here they'll destroy what's left of our homes, and hit people with their attacks deliberately so they can say it's proof they're too weak to be members of the great werewolf race and drag them into the lab so _they_ can get stronger." A slight snarl on they, and that was the first real evidence in the man's behavior that he was a werewolf instead of a powerless human.

"Rozaria."

"Yes, Lord?"

"Lord?" The man whirled in panic, then stared at her. "Someone finally killed him?" Then he winced and covered his mouth. Saying that had gone too far even for someone prepared to give up their life to protect others, it seemed.

"Rozaria, protect these people. Kei," Raskreia said, floating upwards. "Remove the roof of that building."

Her eyes narrowed when she saw the werewolves inside. No. The building was not a hospital.

Most of them she simply lifted out telekinetically, but the ones hooked up to machines and floating in tubes gave her pause. Many of them were on the verge of eternal sleep. Death, rather – these were werewolves, not nobles. Werewolves possessed regeneration, but in some cases – she did not let her eyes dwell on any of them, she was lucky her earthquakes hadn't killed them already – that regeneration clearly wasn't able to handle everything inflicted on them. Disturbing them carelessly might put them past the limit of what their regeneration could endure.

She would have to put up a blood field. She could use her control over them to force their bodies to stay alive long enough either for their regeneration to handle it or for her to do something.

When she was done with the highest level she had Kei remove the next floor, and the next. There were two werewolves in white coats cowering in a corner of one of the lower levels. She forced herself to ignore them as she hovered in the middle, tearing bodies out of the tubes and floating them up, out of this pit. She needed control now, and the werewolves deserved to do to those two whatever needed to be done.

Pounding the ground again when neither of them sensed any minds below them, Kei told her, "Lord, this seems to be the lowest level."

She used her power, then nodded, telekinetically grabbing the two doctors this time and floating up and out.

"All of the ones on this side of the building are alive," she told Rozaria, ignoring the group gathered around her because these werewolves were frightened enough without someone as powerful as the Lord seeming to take personal notice of them. "Some of them will need some time to wake."

The bodies were on the other side. She'd repaired what she could, manifested new legs and given them properly elegant clothing so their families didn't have to see the inelegance they'd been reduced to.

The clamor resumed, werewolves embracing loved ones they'd thought lost. Many of them were still searching the rows.

"Maduke's dead?" a woman asked. "He's really dead?"

She nodded without looking at the woman, who had already shrunk back. "He ordered his warriors to kill two of my clan leaders in front of me. As Lord, I could not permit him to live."

"And you're the one that killed him?"

"Yes."

"Thank you! Thank you, Lord!" the woman said, and dropped to her knees in the mud. It was strange to see it splash: nobles would use their powers to float on the surface instead of _touching_ that. Even the ones who couldn't fly could at least walk.

"Lord?"

"We have a new Lord?"

"The Lord of the Nobles killed Maduke!"

"Lord!" Another fell to his knees before her, an elderly werewolf who covered his eyes to hide tears, voice breaking as he addressed her.

… _Oh._

The noble Lord's right to rule, their authority, came from their intelligence. They were the best for the job, therefore it was their duty to get it done. Raskreia was created by her parent specifically to be Lord and he, in his role as the one who planned the best future of the nobles, had said that she was the one for the job.

…except he'd wanted _him_ instead. Which let the traitors argue that _he_ was the rightful Lord. Despite the fact that while they'd started out rather alike, her intelligence had grown quickly while _he_ needed that blue-eyed Kertia snake to…

It was strange that remembering _him_ barely ruffled her control now. Not after _this_.

The werewolves valued strength instead of intelligence. They proved their strength to become Lord by defeating the previous Lord, an idea which _did_ have some appeal, Raskreia thought, remembering her parent.

"I'm not bowing to a noble!" one green-haired werewolf yelled, and a half-grown werewolf punched him through the wreckage of a building, the energy of claw swipes hanging in the air. Such showy afterimages were inelegant, but these people were not very strong, so perhaps they hadn't seen value in training?

"Say that again!" A third one yelled, coming up next to the girl that punched him. "You think you're too good to bow to her after you spent all that time kissing Juraki's ass!"

Panic in the green one's eyes as he pulled himself up. His stance screamed that he was ready to run. "I never…"

"Bullshit! We knew you were an informant! Your sister disappeared after she got the house instead of you: your _sister!_ You turn on family and you're scum, you think you're better than _anyone?!"_

Raskreia raised a hand, pulling the accused up in the air for all to see. "You are accused of betraying kin." Like Lagus Tradio, abandoning Claudia. Like Gejutel might have if he sold out Rousare. Like Roctis, concealing Ignes' experiments on his own people.

"I never."

"I am the Lord of the Nobles. I can _read minds_. Six betrayed. Five dead. One alive." Still not awake yet. "Juraki knew you were lying about your sister, and you knew that he knew. You knew that he needed an excuse for more victims. But once you gave him one name, you had to give him more, or else he could take you for hiding traitors. After the third, you would not have been missed, and you knew he knew that."

This was the power Raskreia had wanted. The power to read the minds of clan leaders, to identify traitors before they could turn on her people, to know whether or not Gejutel was planning the forced eternal sleep of all the young clan leaders who trusted him, whether he too was smiling as he killed his own _child._

As noble Lord, she was not allowed to do that, but this wasn't a noble. If she executed him now, established the precedent when Rozaria and Kei both looked sick, when the werewolves would be grateful for it, she opened the door to taking that power over the nobles. The werewolves must be afraid there were further spies among them, and what would happen to an innocent who was suspected? She could clear their names.

She didn't even need Ragnarok to kill him, it would be simple enough to use telekinesis to hold and twist.

This would let her keep her people safe. Let her keep Lukedonia free of traitors.

 _But she would not be the last Lord_ , her mind screamed at her.

There would be Elenor clan leaders after Rozaria. Ones who hadn't lived through the time of traitors. Ones who would see that the Lord had the power of life and death over nobles and not understand that it was born of desperate necessity. They would think that it was just and right, because Lords would always use that power with care… but all noble authority derived from the lords.

If nobles grew up thinking that the strong had the right to kill the weak _it would destroy them._

This moment could create a thousand Lagus Tradios. Her people so desperate to be safe, for their children to be safe, and the only way to be safe was to be strong, and what proved strength? Defeating others. _Killing the weak_.

But what was she to do? Lukedonia didn't have a justice system, except her. A _very glaring oversight on her father's part that left her with half a dozen inherited problems to force into eternal sleep_. Lukedonia needed a means of dealing with criminals that didn't carry the taint of revenge, that was elegant instead of arbitrary.

For now, she slammed him down into the ground. "Rozaria, bind him."

"Yes, Lord." The clan leader obeyed, relieved.

Raskreia looked at the werewolves. "He will either be left for you or given a trial on Lukedonia, depending on the outcome. I already have a duty to Lukedonia. I cannot protect you here."

"Oh shit, the human organization," one of them realized.

"They were always wanting more," one of the white-coated ones said, and Raskreia was pleasantly surprised that no one seemed hostile to him. Had he worked there to do what he could for the lost ones?

"Forget them, what about the warriors on missions? _Mount's_ out, his room hasn't been touched in weeks!" There were shudders at the name.

Mount – she made a note of the name. "Lukedonia does not have space for you to roam." That was why werewolves were left in the human world, despite their power. They traveled in small family groups, and while they might meet up, did not settle, even on the island where they most often met.

"No one but Maduke's ass-kissers has left this island in four hundred years, Lord," a grim voice told her, coming from a blue-furred old woman.

A low growl from another. "If you got wanderlust and couldn't hide it from them, they'd haul you in for planning to escape. Treason."

That was not an argument in favor of confining these people to an island. Quite the opposite. Still the Landegre and Loyard had patrolled the human world, doing what they could about the abuses of the human organization, and Rajak had indicated that he would refuse to pull back the Kertia scouts. Not that she could give him that order. She needed the information.

"What's Lukedonia?"

That was a child's voice. A child. There were children in this place where scum who dared call himself Lord saw fit to destroy his people's future for power.

"It's an island hidden from the humans. We'd be safe there. But Lord, you have already done so much for weaklings like us, freeing us from someone we couldn't defeat…"

Even with her empathy suppressed, Raskreia could hear the desperate hope and longing in what had to be a parent's voice.

So, that was settled. "Kei, and any of you who are able – notify the other werewolves on the island to gather whatever they wish to bring and come here." She didn't say 'their things' because it looked like they did not have very much, and she would appreciate any papers they could find… "Rozaria, return to Lukedonia and tell Gejutel to organize ships to bring the werewolves to Lukedonia. He is authorized to use the human fleet." It wasn't trespassing on their wills when their wills had already been so horribly violated. _Surrounding_ Lukedonia with that _nightmare…_

…And what was she going to do with the humans on those ships afterwards? She couldn't return slaves to their violators.

The strong helped the weak.

She couldn't let Lukedonia forget that, or it would cease to be Lukedonia.

"Oh, thank you Lord, thank you…"

Rozaria and Kei looked aghast. Raskreia looked down at the blue woman wrapped around her legs. What did one do in this situation? Her father advised 'cut their head off right away' but only if the person who touched her without permission was male and simple gratitude did not merit eternal sleep.

There was sobbing, but she didn't want it on her clothing so they remained clean.

Ah. Clothing. That was simple.

What clothing the werewolves around her had was _very_ simple.

In order to make her feel utterly ignorant, _his_ companion had shown her a spindle, loom, dye vats, all the complex machinery, training and intelligence humans needed to design and make something even a noble who couldn't work out a thirty-step plan or constantly do math in their head while doing something else as well could do with a flicker of will. The implication was that humans were smarter than nobles, and since he could do this as well, he was smarter than her. So then how much wiser and how better suited to be Lord was that man's Master, was Cadis Etrama di Raizel?

And yet she did not give a damn right now, aside from being grudgingly grateful for the ability to put together that it took resources to make clothing if you couldn't manifest it with the fact that werewolves couldn't manifest clothing and realize that these people weren't this inelegant by choice.

She should likely do something about that. It would not result in a good future for werewolves _or_ nobles if the nobles looked down on them when they arrived.

Also this 'cheering' they were doing was not going to create a good first impression. It was noisy.

No matter how pleasing it was that they _wanted_ her to be their Lord, when her father and the traitors considered her the inferior option. Lords were above such considerations.

Hmm. Clothing, to help restore their pride. More dignified housing, especially when the werewolves would be gathering here. Would she need to adjust the shoreline? No, there was already a place for large ships to come in.

Rajak would come here as soon as Rozaria carried the message – he was the fastest. She didn't need to give that order when he would insist. Should she order Rozaria to stay in Lukedonia instead of following him? Since the traitors had shown they would attack nobles without hesitation, she needed to keep a large enough force on Lukedonia to protect the weaker nobles while keeping a strong enough force with the ships to handle any werewolf warriors who tried to recapture their… 'experimental material' was the phrase being thrown around. They couldn't let them reach the ships and hold the battle there. These were not strong werewolves and she needed to find out how far they could swim.

The clan leader she _wanted_ was Ludis, both for his soul weapon and his facility with paperwork. There were documents in that lab. Raskreia needed _information_ , and it was frustrating that she couldn't read any of it now without running the risk of becoming enraged. She'd only been able to hold on while she was in that vile lab because of the horror of realizing how close she'd come to crushing people who could do _nothing_ to stop what was done to them already.

* * *

 _In a lot of countries ruled by dictatorships that don't care about the welfare of the people, the rich live in palaces and the poor in slums._

 _Remember, Maduke_ wanted _his people to hate him and try to rebel against him. Because he was using the 'they're traitors' justification to sell the idea that it was okay to experiment on their own to the warriors. This works a lot better when there_ really are _people who would desperately love to rebel._

 _Living for centuries knowing that they were in the power of a dictator who wasn't even just going for oppression but_ wanted _an excuse to drag people away in the night is going to make the werewolves' main criteria for Werewolf Lord_ not Maduke. _If this was a crackfic, I could have done a 'Ding-dong, the witch is dead!' number._

 _Yeah, they're trading one island for another, but the other one they're getting to choose to be on, at least, and it doesn't have any 'my family's been murdered and I can't do shit about it' memories associated with it._

 _Due to the guess that werewolves are 'adapt to survive,' and epigenetics allows_ humans _to make changes in a single generation, Maduke got to have a nasty amount of effect on werewolves. For instance, drastically early fertility tends to show up in humans when lifespans are shit and you need to have kids young to have them at all. This means that people stop growing to put that energy into children instead, so he's basically bred the werewolf general population for weakness in more ways that just grabbing the strong people. Given their ability to adapt, this can be undone even for werewolves that have already been born, but it's still going to have some effect on their culture going forward._


	3. Chapter 3

_According to the ancient descriptions of them, unicorns are ultra-aggressive and will fight_ everything _._

 _The 'virgin' thing is notable because people of absolute purity are the one thing they don't MURDER and this is a pretty dramatic change from their normal behavior._

 _Adds an amusing note to how grumpy Regis gets when Rael talks about despoiling Seira, and Regis doesn't even know that Rael planned to_ murder him _so that Seira would have nobody left but Rael._

 _Herbivores don't like being eaten and two of the notable strategies for avoiding this are 1. Run away (which Landegre are too Honorable to do) and 2, kill it before it can kill you (see the cape buffalo). The fact that Gejutel has survived to become a very old murder horse means he's very, very good at number 2. He keeps not dying in canon despite his massive collection of death flags._

* * *

"Really? I really get to? Really?" Karias asked, bouncing behind him.

He was doing it to annoy Rajak even just a _fraction_ as much as Karias had been annoyed when Rajak kept telling him no. "You'll have to," he said. They couldn't keep them safe otherwise.

"You're telling the Lord," Karias warned him. Karias had been smart enough to see the necessity of this, how it might someday be of use, how it could limit the damage, otherwise when he told Ragar what he sensed and Ragar told him _not_ to handle this Karias would have advised him to enter eternal sleep before Karias forced him into it. Karias _still_ wasn't taking responsibility for this.

It was Ragar's responsibility, true. His duty was the reason he'd implored Karias not to fulfil his own. So he nodded, and as soon as they reached the door Karias was jumping up the castle, gaining altitude and going to rapid fire.

He _could_ make less noise than that, Rajak knew. Now was he making that much noise because he was happy, to be annoying, or both?

Rajak smiled behind his mask, already running. Rajak needed to reach the Lord immediately. He would be telling her.

Karias was staying on Lukedonia, and that meant he would be telling _Ludis_ that there had been a clan-leader-level security threat on the island and Rajak asked him to keep it a secret so Rajak could exercise some control over the werewolf spy and her reports.

* * *

The werewolves weren't very interested in staying on the island even in new houses, although they spoke longingly of hot springs and human-style bathhouses. A hot spring did not take very long to figure out, with the volcano already active. There may have been some small explosions, but the werewolves were very happy with the result. A werewolf's power didn't let them clean themselves: control over one's body and appearance was part of basic dignity to a noble, so she was glad it was so simple to restore it to them.

Saying this just made some of them plead and whine softly, wanting to stay by their Lord. She couldn't blame them. Even her _father_ had considered the previous Werewolf Lord irresponsible, always wandering off to stay with _him_ and leaving his people defenseless. If _this_ was what happened to the werewolves when a Lord abandoned them, then she could respect their determination to invite themselves to the land of the nobles and be near someone strong who had proven her willingness to protect them.

She was sure some less-grateful werewolves were sneaking off their people's island the way the traitors left Lukedonia. As then, in the short term it was convenient for traitors to remove themselves. The werewolves were more fragile than she thought – she did not wish to engage in battle again on their island. For now. After its people were brought to safety… The only humans who would come here were those who abandoned humanity for power. It would not be inelegant of her to squish some of them. Some other werewolves came before her to petition her to leave to track down family members who had managed to escape and go into hiding and bring them to Lukedonia: that permission was granted, although she advised them to wait until Rajak could assign a Kertia to escort them, if they could. Werewolves could not alter memories or quickly learn human ways and Maduke's subjects had no idea what the world outside was like or how to camouflage themselves among the humans.

That was obviously deliberate, to make it harder for them to run and live.

Two camps formed, one by the hot spring for those waiting to bathe, or refusing to leave the hot water until the boats got here, and another by the docks.

"What is it, Sir Ru?" one of the werewolves asked, bowing when they saw him frown as he looked out at the bonfires and extended families camped between them.

"According to the elders of my clan, the werewolves used to live in small family groups, with warriors traveling to train in solitude. The Ru clan devotes ourselves to training to protect the Lord, and many of our training methods are supposed to come from the werewolves."

"It's too easy to disappear someone who lives on their own, or even a small family, I'm afraid. It's safer to live in large extended families. Some of Maduke's warriors can conceal themselves, or move so fast weak ones like us can't see them, so it can be dangerous to let a relative out of sight, especially after dark. It isn't safe either to be powerful, these days…" She saw the light of realization in the werewolf's eyes. "It wasn't safe to be powerful, Lord." They bowed to her

That explained why so many of the werewolves were _touching_ each other. Even those who weren't children. It was strange to see adults sleeping at all, but adults in piles, touching five or six other adults! Raskreia didn't know why they thought she would care about werewolves removing dirty clothing to bathe so they could wash the clothes separately, when werewolves couldn't simply conjure clothing for themselves, but all these people ignoring personal space! In public!

Bodies were very personal things. Her father claimed that wearing more or less clothing made a difference but Raskreia personally didn't see it. No matter how much clothing you were wearing, allowing someone to see you was allowing someone to see you. Or not allowing them. If someone didn't wish to be seen while unclothed, then it would be inelegant to ignore that, no matter if it was arbitrary. There was obviously a great difference between looking and touching! What if werewolves could touch each other's souls the way nobles could, would they… Yes. They probably would. With a mental link, you would be alerted instantly if a loved one was knocked unconscious or was being taken away. What was preventing noise and intrusions next to the will to protect?

For now the question was moot, because she was watching over them – she had sent Rajak to guard the hot spring camp as punishment for not informing her about the werewolf spy on her island – and it would be excellent training for her ability to keep her composure.

She ignored the werewolves who were standing in a loose circle a respectful distance from her, intercepting anyone who approached to ask them their intentions. They were not strong enough to matter to a Lord's safety, but it was good for them to exercise their will to protect, after so long unable to protect themselves.

That would have to be remedied.

* * *

The three nobles waited to greet her on the deck of one of the ships. After showing her the proper courtesies, "I have already taken in most of the humans, Lord," said Seira Loyard, who reminded Raskreia very much of herself when she was young. She would punish Gejutel for bringing children as young as her and Regis, but there would soon be werewolf children on these ships. Where was safer than under the watchful eye of the Lord?

Gejutel was so traditional that his view of what was proper was offset from Raskreia's generation. It was one of the things that made it so that his actions made sense one way, as the actions of a loyal clan leader, yet simultaneously fit a picture of a traitor. Rather like the image of both a skull and two children in one of the textbooks brought back when the Knights' doctor went to train at human medical school again.

Here were two children, but Gejutel's skull would vanish with him if he crossed her.

"They had crew both to sail the ship and to fight with it. Since the humans won't be doing the fighting, I wanted them where they would be safe. And we needed to make room for the werewolves," Seira explained.

Raskreia nodded. The Will to Protect should be some comfort to Seira, after the loss of her parent.

Gejutel was sparkling proudly down at the girl, but he had regained his composure by the time Seira rose from where she had genuflected to greet the Lord.

"The Clan Leader said that werewolves know that honorable nobles won't put a child in danger," Regis said, although he couldn't hide the slight scowl at the idea of being kept out of danger. It reminded her of Rousare, who got very, very stubborn at any implication that he shouldn't be gallivanting around the human world with an incomplete soul weapon. "If I'm here, they might feel safer, even if I'm not able to protect them yet."

…perhaps she should not have assigned Regis to Karias for training. That was Karias' twisty way of thinking, like how Regis was trying to convince her that he knew better than to put himself in danger to protect the werewolf children when he wasn't strong enough, when he _absolutely would_ put himself in danger if you gave him any reason at all. Landegre. What made it worse was that Regis was genuinely trying to be humble, not manipulative, and was failing to point out that he'd enter eternal sleep trying to protect the children and be very pleased with himself because that should be obvious. He was a _Landegre_ , after all.

Perhaps she should leave him with Karias, because if Karias managed to make Regis realize that he was using word-trickery, Regis would be absolutely horrified and, most importantly, knock it off.

"Lord, I'm sure the Ru clan will also petition to be allowed to protect the werewolves, but if I would be grateful if you would permit me to petition you on behalf of the Landegre Clan," Gejutel said, genuflecting himself now that the children had gone first and been honored with the attention of the Lord. "My son went into eternal sleep to protect the weak from scum and traitors. I cannot express how much it means that…" He swallowed, overcome.

"Clan Leader?" Regis asked, worried.

Raskreia held up a hand. "I went to the land of the werewolves to avenge Rousare and your parent as well, Seira. By my authority, I dedicate the liberation of the werewolves to their memory. I will allow the Landegre to extend their protection to the werewolves, so that Rousare's will to protect will live on." The way Seira protected humans now, as her own parent had.

Gejutel rose to his feet and thumped his chest as Regis began to shed quiet tears. "I, Gejutel K. Landegre, salute the Lord!" Summoning Regasus, he thumped it against the floor.

Everyone winced as the ship rang like a bell.

Gejutel coughed. "Lord, if you would permit me to reassure them that we have not hit a rock?"

Raskreia nodded.

Seira patted the crying Regis on the shoulder as the two of them exchanged a look. Was it something about the male human form? No, she had known intelligent people who took male form, even if Karias, her father and Frankenstein were still very irritating. Hmm, all of them had long hair. Did short hair have some detrimental effect on brain function? Perhaps she should order Rajak to bring more medical textbooks.

No, being able to increase the intelligence of her nobles by ordering them all to change the length of their hair was too good to be true.

Regis had quieted and received her pardon for his noise by the time Gejutel returned. "I intend to offer the werewolves the Forbidden Land," she told him. Ideally, she would be able to secure passage for the werewolves through most of Lukedonia, so they could at least move around when they wished even if there was not a great deal of land for them to travel, but she wanted to see Gejutel's reactions to her statement.

First, alarm. "I'm sure you remember Frankenstein, Lord," he said first, face slightly pale.

"Yes?" What about him. "I won't deny these people a territory of their own to spare a traitor's feelings."

Gejutel shook his head. "Frankenstein was a cruel man, who stooped so low as to harm innocent humans, and he delighted in tormenting nobles. Whenever anyone damaged his property, he would fly into a violent rage and torment them in ways… I would rather not speak of in front of children. He restrained himself around his Master," and Raskreia had only interacted with Frankenstein in Cadis Etrama di Raizel's home, "but I was glad when you gave the Central Order Knights permission to keep other nobles from wandering into the Forbidden Land. I _dread_ to think what kind of sadistic traps he left behind to punish anyone who dared approach his Master's house."

"You were a friend of Frankenstein's, were you not?"

"Your father ordered me to keep him under observation, Lord. I was also responsible for Ragar, and you knew Ragar. He asked Frankenstein to train with him, and I had to go to keep an eye on things. I did train with him sometimes, partially to keep him from spending all his efforts on skewering Ragar."

The way he fought revealed that Frankenstein was a pureblooded Kertia, who loved every technique that gave them the name 'assassin.' She could see Ragar lowering himself to learn Frankenstein's skills – for he was much more experienced than Ragar – to defend his Lord and his Clan. It would have been difficult to ask Ragar to exercise reasonable caution around family.

"He was a monster, but he was honest about it. I would rather have the company of a man like that than someone pretending virtue." Gejutel's words could be taking as the ramblings of an old man, but then he had just implied that he would like to consort with a traitor once again.

Once again, she considered adopting a policy of never trusting anyone over three thousand. What concerned her was that she found lies and cunning so distasteful that she might not have mastered them by the time she reached that age without frequent exposure. As Lord, she needed to master this skill, as distasteful as she found it.

"Gejutel, you are not controlling the sailors." Neither were the children. She'd expected him to need help: why were the Union's slaves obeying him?

"I gave them some of the memories of one of my contractors, Lord. A contract I made millennia before they were forbidden," he rushed to reassure her. "That contractor made a study of how humans, nobles and werewolves resist mind control."

"So their memories taught those humans enough that they could realize their wills were being controlled by the Union and break free."

He nodded: of course the Lord could see how it worked. "She had me carry some of her memories for that purpose."

Now. The question was, "Why was one of your contractors studying mind control?"

* * *

 _Noble memory… well, would need to be better than human, but due to the contract thing it's possible Gejutel still has soul fragments stuck onto him, and this one came from someone with a trained memory._


	4. Chapter 4

_Non-Raskreia POVs this chapter, filling out what's going on in the background._

* * *

"Find him quarters," Lunark ordered.

"Thank you, Lady, thank you," the werewolf said, bowing and scraping as he left.

Kentas scowled at him. "Didn't even introduce himself."

Like his name mattered. Well. Maybe it did. Not knowing it might make it a little easier to bargain him away if she needed to.

She probably would, Lunark knew. As soon as this news reached the rest of the Union… at the bare minimum, both the Union or Lagus Tradio would be coming by to offer her help recapturing the werewolves _in exchange for_ as much as they could get.

"Probably didn't want to take responsibility for running, even if it was to get help," Kentas decided.

Or didn't want reprisals against his family for bringing bad news. Even if he was only bringing the news in hope of being rewarded. By the warriors sparing the lives of his family.

"We'll have to wait until they reach Lukedonia," Kentas said, pacing while Lunark sat in her elder chair, desperately thinking.

"That would mean the nobles can bring their full force against us."

"We can't fight with the family on human ships, they're too breakable."

Even Union ships. They only had unenhanced human crew, wasn't like they could do a thing against Lukedonia no matter how long they lasted. They distracted that pet of the Fourth's until it was time for him to be cannon fodder, and it was good propaganda, that the nobles just let it happen.

"Right," Lunark agreed. She'd have to argue about it with the warriors, who would want to just sink the traitors. Pointing out that handing the traitors who joined the nobles over to the Union would be a worse fate should do it.

Damn. Damn damn _damn_.

She'd always been the soft one, she'd _gotten to be_ the soft one. Preserving Kentas' innocence and all. Maduke got her a Union seat to show her how disgusting the humans were. How vital his plan was to the welfare of the family.

But she'd never had to make the tough choices. She knew that the family was strong because of Maduke, but she'd never sacrificed herself and her honor the way the others had because she thought the family could protect itself despite her selifhsness. But look what happened: the nobles managed to assassinate him while the Union was focused on guarding the two new Elders from noble reprisal, and what they'd _thought_ was the senile Landegre clan head making a pointless gesture – the sailors would die and they'd replace them with new ones, see how the noble liked _that_ – actually had a _point._

Juraki had to be dead, or else he'd have reported to her already. Probably. She knew he'd assigned Kaiyo to Lukedonia. They'd thought the nobles couldn't detect Kaiyo, but the nobles had their own intelligence officer: had Rajak Kertia and the Lord had Karias conceal that he could detect Kaiyo until they needed to keep her from reporting?

Ugh, the rest of the family just didn't _understand!_ They _needed_ to get strong, or the nobles would start lording it over them again – literally now! – or those vicious beasts in the Union would eat them alive.

Being confined to the island was a temporary measure until they were sure Muzaka and his supporters were dealt with: it was to _protect_ them, because if they weren't in contact with Muzaka then they wouldn't be under suspicion! But then the humans began to get strong enough to take out lone werewolves and…

…And even if Maduke's strongest supporters thought Lunark was soft and therefore automatically weak, never mind that it was _because_ she was the strongest that it was safe to leave her unenhanced, and they needed an unenhanced werewolf for the Union seat so the Union didn't have a chance to look at Maduke's discoveries until it was too late…

Dorant had to be dead, and if that disgusting old man was still alive she'd have to take him out before he assassinated her. He'd tried it when she was a puppy of only a hundred, because he had Maduke's favor and she and Kentas had _known_ Muzaka.

If everyone didn't think it was hilarious that Kentas didn't have a clue about how long she'd been keeping him safe…

She was the werewolf Lord now. Sure, that noble had the title, but so had _Muzaka_ and it was stripped from him because he didn't care about the family! A noble had no right to rule the werewolves, they never had!

At least Maduke using her as the moderate voice meant people were used to listening to her opinions, and thought that Maduke thought her opinion was good enough that she was allowed to say things like that instead of shutting up and doing what the Lord said. If they also thought she was weak, and emotional, and too easy on traitors, she'd just have to prove otherwise.

She'd have to sell a lot of traitors to the Union. That should do it.

" _You'll have to make sure Kentas dies fighting the nobles. You know he'll never stand for it,_ " she heard Maduke's voice in her head, and shuddered.

She _needed_ Kentas. He was strong, she could use him the way Maduke used her, let him have his opinions, his ridiculous antique 'honor' that didn't _care_ how many of the family died without enhancements, because not everyone could get strong Kentas' way…

But he'd never stand for it. Not the way she had. Disgusting humans were one thing, she'd viewed that as a way to get him to see what the world was like now, but _family_ …

Kentas would never admit the necessity of Maduke's plans. What she would have done when he found out…

And that was another reason Maduke used her as the voice for sparing their family as much as possible. Because one day she either _would_ be a traitor, and all her words would be the words of treason, or she'd have to let him have Kentas. Because he was _right_.

Now Maduke wasn't here anymore. And she was the only other one who knew the twisted Union. Who could negotiate with it and _maybe_ keep them from getting skinned. Fatally.

"Kentas, you heard the new Elders," she said, taking a breath. "All the nobles agree the only way a young Lord could have beaten Maduke and the other warriors is by taking out most of the island to get at them. The werewolves on those ships… either they were captured and forced to go with them," which had to be what Kentas was assuming, "or they _chose_ to go with someone who wiped out most of our family."

Her friend jerked back, eyes demanding how _could_ she say something so horrible about their family. She met his eyes and nodded. "You know how many traitors there were," she said, low and serious. "Muzaka's faction? Even when it was pointless from the beginning, he never cared about the family even before he disappeared? What if the ones on the ships were _spared_ because they were working for the nobles from the beginning? A lot of people hated what Lord Maduke had to do to root out the traitors."

Kentas shook himself. "They're family, but…"

From the way his fists clenched, she might be able to talk sense into him. Good. She needed warriors more than examples.

No. If she was going to replace Maduke, she needed both.

* * *

"I remember the last two years, and they're real memories, that stuff really happened, but it's still fake because I was being made to think those things, to feel those things. The person who decided that I was going to get up in the morning and do my job wasn't _me_." He took another swig of the beer that came over on the supply chopper and stared down at it. "Then there's another part of me that remembers that this is what beer is supposed to taste like, even though the Union never had us get drunk – just drugged – and now I have another set of memories that thinks this is absolute shite and what the hell, did humans forget how to make bloody _beer_ over the last however long it's been? The fuck happened to my species?" Yeah, the Union, but what did the Union have against beer? Unless it was some plot to undermine humanity's foundations to weaken it, because _beer._

He glared at it and then took a drink again, because it was alcohol, even if it was weak-arse, disgusting alcohol. "The third set's real, but it's not mine any more than the Union slave was _me_. And I know we got those so that we could look at the slave memories and go 'wait a bloody minute' because we had some memories of _not being doormats_ again. I don't mind 'em, stuff's like out of a movie."

And it was good that it was so easy to tell that those memories were not-me, the way the 'nobles are the enemy' crap was from _the people who did this to him, destroyed his life_ , because the people in the cabin with him with furry cheeks and weirdly-shaped shoulder-blades kept waking up those memories. Here he was, eating in the cafeteria, and someone'd get up to get another tray and he'd see that gait out of the edge of his eyes and instincts that weren't his (the way the feelings the damn Union programmed in weren't his) would go _heads up!_

It was actually handy that they were intrusive, because ok, this is what stuff that doesn't belong in your head can be like. And they didn't try to stifle him like the other set of impulses.

This set wanted to smile and say, "Sorry mate, but it was my parents or your kids, and _I loved my parents you bastards_." One set of intrusive thoughts balancing out another shouldn't really make sense, but the new one he really had to get a handle on fast because damn these poor werewolf kids. Not allowed to run around, no muscle on them, because their parents couldn't let them look like good test subjects? Moms who had to bring kids into that world because _loyal_ werewolves added to the family, and disloyal werewolves came from disloyal families, even knowing that they'd be used as hostages to get their kids to behave, when it was their kids' turn?

They'd seen him flinching back and assumed someone'd hurt him, when the reason he'd flinched back was that he'd seen someone purple without red eyes and realized that he was figuring out how to kill somebody – thank goodness if he'd tried to kill him it would have been with his mind, not with a gun, so no one would have gotten hurt. Then he'd realized that he'd already been programmed to kill people. Fired on real boats because that was a good way to test out the guns. Captured ships full of innocent people and handed them over to the bastards who _did this to him_. Not even a little voice screaming at him in his head that _killing people was wrong_ , because the Union took that from him.

But he could compare impulses to impulses, and when the one he knew was not his and he was absolutely not acting on it because these werewolves had been hurt enough was not-him, then he could maybe see that when he killed those people for the union, it wasn't him.

He kind of wanted to talk to the old guy/The Kid (heh, like goat kid, funny coincidence) to hear it from the horse's mouth (heh again), but he wasn't going to act all familiar because of memories he knew weren't his.

The werewolves were looking at each other. One of the ladies shuddered. "We kept getting told that the humans were monsters who did terrible things to their own family, that we should be _grateful_ for the terrible things Maduke did to us because otherwise the humans would take over and it would be worse, but he was part of your Union." Her eyes widened. "Not that I wanted to say that humans are just like _Maduke."_ The name came out as a growl.

"No offense taken. I remember general information from the person I was before the Union got its hands on me, and it says that werewolves are mythical, but they were all born human. Basically the same as us, but a curse or whatever that drives you out of control and makes you do things you wouldn't normally do every so often." The way he'd been made to do things and _damn_ he hoped that the person he really was wasn't that kind of person. "But the memories the old guy gave us to make us wake up? They were from a _way_ long time ago, although I can't figure out when exactly." Something the Union covered up, or had he just not paid enough attention in school? Or maybe people didn't know how high-tech humans were back then because they hadn't really figured out about metal yet, so everything was made out of stuff that fell apart over time? If memory-guy wanted something cut, he'd find someone who could do aura knives even before he got the power to do that himself.

He peered at the ship's metal bulkhead. For all he knew, they _had_ had metal, and just hadn't bothered to use it because it was too much work for too little benefit. Fighting werewolves, steel'd be just as useless as straw.

"Anyway, they were at war with you guys. It wouldn't have been as many generations for you as it has for us." He avoided glancing at the gray-haired girl and her brown-and-tan-haired baby (a human kid wouldn't have hair that thick yet). "So I can see how you'd still think humans were the enemy."

When they were talking ages, she'd said sixty-one, quietly, and the converter in his head pulled that up as _eight_. Able to talk, able to run, not stupid, maybe some basic self-defense (eight-year-old humans knew to run to a contractor), but was it different for werewolves? Was the regen how she'd _survived_ having a kid that young?

"War, between us and humans?" One of the werewolves who'd been sitting on the edge of the conversation listening in scoffed.

"How do you think you guys became nomadic?" he wondered. "The way the memories heard it, you used to find a range where there weren't nobles who liked to pick fights." Damn frost giants, fighting louder than a thunderstorm when _some_ people needed to sleep. "Pick somewhere with elephants or something else pretty smart if you were going to have kids, and hunker down. Chimp moms try to eat brains, because the stuff in them is exactly what their kids need to grow their own brain. Werewolves were the same, you needed to eat something smart. Then… what the nobles consider the first humans came along. We managed to convince the chimps to take us off the menu, but you guys were a little more stubborn about it, and we could convince nobles to let us use their mojo."

He smiled. "They _don't like_ the idea of people not being able to defend themselves. Then some of you guys figured that we'd trained the nobles to defend us – you knew we were smart, because that was why you got smart from eating us, but you didn't know the nobles were smart – and started taking out some of the weaker nobles so you could hunt humans in what used to be their territory. That made it not just about helping humans – because nobles think that helping people is bad for them, 'cause it's saying they can't take care of themselves. Before that, we could get the nobles to do stuff for us every so often if we were smart about it, but with a war on we started actually working together. They could hand out magic and we knew how to hunt and kill things. The memories I have came from when the war ended because the Lord back then figured out how you could grow your own… neurons!" There was a word now. "The stuff brains are made out of. So you don't have to eat anybody for your kids to be able to talk."

One of the werewolves nodded slowly. "I wondered," he said gravely. "You humans were a lot like us, then and now. The nobles are not. Both of us spent what seems like a long time ruled by evil," to werewolves five hundred years wasn't much. Except to the werewolves aged sixty, or two. To them, he bet five hundred years used to feel like 'a lot longer than I'm going to live,' same as humans.

Time. And memory. Not that he'd be contributing to future generations. There weren't any girls on the Union ships. Not that it mattered: they'd snipped his bits, something that had made the bit he was pretty sure was him start _screaming_ wherever it was buried in his head. His body was _wrong_ , like everything else was.

He and the others were going to be put up in where the Loyard clan used to live when they were done with the ships (and he had no idea which clan that was – the river dragons, maybe?). Their brains and bodies were pretty fucked up (he wanted to cross his legs protectively, but _too late_ ), so they would probably all be dead by the time the orphaned Loyard clan leader grew up and needed the space for a clan. The werewolves were going to the Landegre place for now (and wasn't that a punch to the gut, knowing that vast herd of thundering hooves was down to The Kid and _a_ kid) but at least the Tiger Clan was still doing okay. Their admiration of the werewolf warriors' dedication to training for the sake of their people's kids had gotten them a lot of side-eyeing in the borrowed memories: he wasn't surprised that from a look at the current clan leader, they'd started acting more like werewolves than the werewolves after the treaty.

The important thing was, _were there any nobles left who could grow his bits back_. Somebody had grabbed the kid while freaking out and mentioned it not long after they started waking up, but the memories agreed that The Kid kind of sucked at healing people – rearranging someone else's body like it was clothing or something seemed kind of inelegant and intrusive to him, and mental blocks were killer in nobles when their powers were mental. An injury years old? When their brains got turned into Swiss cheese and they didn't even remember what their bits used to look like?

Central Order Knights (at least there were still knights around, even if there were only nobles in 'em now) said that they had a few nobles who could fix up complex injuries, but there were _how_ many people on these ships? There was going to be a _waiting list_! He was lucky if he'd get to be a real man again before he was… how old even was he?

That was when he took a look at his hands, and there should not be this many wrinkles on them. Two years, even at sea, should not cause this many wrinkles.

* * *

 _Because I love worldbuilding, I've been considering a backstory for the werewolves, and I used one of those theories for the fic. Short version: Shoggoths. Since they were created as a slave race, they're much better off when they have brains to think with that_ aren't _hardwired with slave programming. The reason that despite werewolf regen, stolen brains kept dying is that since they were supposed to adapt, there were countermeasures in place to spot and destroy any adaptations that gave them a way to disobey. The reason human brains could keep working as long as they did was that without the Old Ones around and giving them orders, there weren't any obvious red flags like disobedience or attacking a master, so it'd take the system awhile to catch on and they had a couple months' warning In the form of dementia before complete personality destruction._

 _Post-war, the werewolves were making a lot of headway on civilization and getting along with humans. We already had a niche in our lives/ecosystem for 'immortals we get along with' and werewolves basically running on human brains let us understand them only a little less well than other humans (werewolves weren't psychic)._

 _Then the nobles were confined to Lukedonia, and while the werewolves couldn't do all the things humans used nobles for, they could at least do a few of them. In some regions they became part of human communities outright._

 _Then Rai's brother hit and while he didn't consider werewolves anywhere near being an actual threat to nobles the way humans were, the fact werewolves had humanish brains made him worry that given that evolution thing, over (geological) time werewolves might develop the traits that made humans so dangerous, so since he was committing genocide_ already…

 _So in this 'verse the werewolves started out a slave race, then mindless animals, then a free people able to stand up against a human/noble alliance in the name of their survival and that of their families, then living under oppression. They don't know the starting point or just how impressive their ancestors were, but they do know that they've fallen/lost the pride they used to have. Contrasted here with a human turned into a mindless slave, then give the POV of a very proud, certainly not docile (see Gejutel's opinion of humanity) human._

 _Oh – in a theoretical human/noble joint military, nobles couldn't be in command positions. All noble right to tell people what to do derives from the Lord, and the Lord only has authority over nobles given the social contract that gives them the right to give orders. So a noble couldn't 'legally' have the right to tell humans what to do, and between elegance and the Noblesse, I doubt the decent nobles would go and do it anyway. So a young Gejutel in this 'verse could have been pretty used to following orders from humans, at least commanders on the battlefield._


	5. Chapter 5

It didn't seem to take very long for the ships to reach one of the gates to Lukedonia, but Regis was as glad as the werewolves when they reached the island and were told they could get off. The werewolves stared at him the entire time. He wasn't going to accuse them of inelegance under the circumstances, and he supposed they were going to be living with the Landegre, many of them, so it made sense that they would want to make sure he behaved honorably.

Like the clan leader, Regis let the werewolves head for the exits so they could jump to land first: he didn't mind being confined the way they did. It was hard to feel confined when the ship was so fragile even a child needed to be warned not to practice at all or he would break it.

By the time they could walk across the gangplank to the pier the Knights built for human ships that got lost, the crowd had already spread out a bit. The clan leader walked forward a ways and waved a hand."I will be taking my grandson home," he announced. "If you don't wish to go to Landegre Manor now, the knights can escort you later."

Several of the werewolves ran over or jumped to land near them. Most of them were carrying bundles of some kind. "Sir Gejutel?" When he turned to face the one who addressed him tentatively. "You said that… Is there a list for assigning rooms?"

Gejutel smiled. "Well, you're all adults, and you know what you need better than I do. Why don't you take a look through the rooms, and if you can't find something suitable or there's a disagreement, I'll be in the sitting room. There are also a few cottages on the grounds – not that many, I'm afraid." Most of the clan preferred to live together. "I'm sure something can be worked out."

"Thank you, sir." They seemed a little surprised for some reason – the one who spoke even blushed a little.

"I'm afraid I haven't had a chance to go through the rooms. If there's anything in there you can use, I'm sure my clan would have wanted you to have those things."

"We heard that you and the cub lost Family too… We'll treat their things respectfully," a woman promised them, expression turning from admiring to vicious when she bared her teeth at some other werewolves, who nodded quickly.

"Well, it has worked out. I'm glad the Lord has given the Landegre a chance to protect you in the name of my son, Rousare." Grandfather straightened himself: this wasn't the time to be emotional. There were cubs smaller than Regis in the crowd. Some of them were in the bundles! "Follow me," he told them, walking until the cubs started bounding ahead and it became clear they wouldn't have trouble keeping up if they moved a little faster.

The manor could be seen from farther away than most of the clan manors. It was on top of a hill, and the way Landegre fought involved charging, and while doing it among the trees without hitting them was better practice, the open grass surrounding the hill was better for technique demonstrating.

When they got close enough to see more than the top floor windows, Regis frowned. There was something new at the base of the hill. "Clan Leader, what is that building?"

"I asked the Mergas to build a bathhouse for the new arrivals."

Regis frowned. He knew birds bathed, but _people_? Or were they bathing their clothes? Wasn't the word 'wash' then?

"Sir Gejutel… That's so considerate of you. Thank you so much, sir."

The clan leader smiled. "I might not have thought of it if it weren't for the Lord's example."

He saw the cubs perking up at that, as they made the connection between 'bathhouse' and the hot spring baths.

It was time for Regis' nap, and he didn't want to be in the way while people were running in the halls. Changing into his pyjamas, he paused. They were all made by cousins, because when he was small he wasn't able to reliably make elegant clothing yet. In the dresser there were sets put aside for when he grew, but also the sets he had outgrown.

He made a neat stack of the smallest sleeping clothes, to start with, and went to ask the clan leader.

Grandfather was in the sitting room with three werewolves, one of them pouring tea. "Your old clothes? Good thinking, Regis."

"Some of my cousins made these," he told the werewolf who was holding one of the blank leather-bound journals that were put out in the sitting room so the clan members could take a new one on the way out to duty if their last ran out of room. Central Order Knights needed to keep records of their activities.

"So they might have fabric!" The werewolf grinned, making a note.

"Ardann was very fond of machinery: he moved to one of the cottages to have room for a landing strip, but he left the looms here for the clan to use," Gejutel remembered. "I'm not sure how much of his repair kit would be there, or if he brought it all back to the cottage to work on that plane they found."

"Plane, sir?"

"The humans have come up with machines that can fly."

"Oh. The Union calls them transports." The werewolf didn't seem interested in them. Regis agreed: they were noisy and smelled bad. He wasn't going to inflict that on others just because he had trouble flying. "I'm glad you have mechanics!" An unfamiliar word. "The garden sheds are one thing, but we've missed five hundred years of the humans coming up with tools."

"We still have to learn about something in order to duplicate it. Human inventions are so complex these days, and the Central Order Knights try to stay informed about shipbuilding and such things." So they could repair some of the wrecked ships.

"We're very grateful for your generosity, Sir Gejutel. We'll do our best to stop being a burden on you as soon as possible."

"Not too soon, I hope," Gejutel said. "Pride in being self-sufficient is important, of course, but I am looking after you in the name of my child, Rousare. I appreciate the chance to give him a proper memorial, and there's no need for it to be a _small_ one."

Admiring glances from all the werewolves in the room, before they all realized they might be embarrassing Sir Gejutel and looked away.

"Why didn't anyone say they found a loom?" The dark-brown furred werewolf pouring the tea wondered, changing the subject. Regis wondered at first why she had no ears, but werewolves didn't seem to have the laws saying they all had to look like proper humans. "They're large and hard to miss."

"They might not have known what they were looking at." The note-taker blanched. "I hope no one cleared it away to use those rooms…"

"Ardann's rooms were in the southwest wing, second floor, fourth from the end."

After putting down the teacup, the brown-furred one took off running as Gejutel picked up his fresh cup.

Regis stood there, still holding the pyjamas. The note-taker had looked up to watch the other werewolf go, and seemed to take notice of Regis. "Uxord?" he asked the third werewolf. "Sorry for keeping you waiting," he apologized to Regis.

Uxord nodded to Regis. "Thank you so much for thinking of us. If those are children's clothes, the best place might be the bathhouse changing room. That way the parents would have something to put the cubs into while they're washing the cubs' clothing."

Regis nodded and looked at the clan leader. Gejutel nodded a dismissal.

There was screaming coming from the bathhouse. What made Regis stand in the doorway of the main house instead of running for the clan leader was that the screaming sounded _happy_. He approached cautiously.

He stopped a ways away from the doors to wait for the adult to go through, but the werewolf carrying the large sheet of granite that looked like he had clawed it from the cliffs bowed to Regis. It was only when Regis answered with a nod that he straightened and indicated with a shoulder for him to go through first.

"The clan heir is here, and I got another rock!" the werewolf yelled as soon as he was inside.

"Then hurry up with it!"

He seemed to know where he was going, so Regis followed, ignoring the shy glances and outright staring, hoping to find the place where people were supposed to bring things.

There were blue lights on the walls, but the roof overhead was glass to let in the sunlight. Regis walked carefully: marble was easy to dent. The room was big enough that it must be almost half of the building, and there were three steaming pools. Regis followed the man past the largest: there were people lying in it, some of them underwater but a young woman about Seira's height was floating on the top of it, napping. He wondered if that was comfortable.

Three werewolves were fetching water in buckets out of the smallest pool, and pouring it over themselves or companions. It was so noisy in here, but Regis didn't have trouble hearing the one of the ones sitting down ask, "Is it all out?"

"Let's see," said the one with the bucket, sitting down to dig in the other's back fur.

The rock was put down next to two others in the medium sized pool, one side on the bottom of the pool and another on the side, propping it at an angle going into the water. As soon as it was set down, two werewolves (carefully) jumped on it and dipped clothing in the water, getting it wet and starting to grind it against the rock for some reason. More werewolves were standing around a hollowed-out tree-trunk filled with bubbles.

"Oh crap, it tore!" yelled one of the people on the rocks.

"Is it your sister's?"

"Yeah, Mom."

"Not your fault, cub, I don't know how that ended up in your pile." She held out her arm and he handed her shredded cloth. "Looks like you got all of it, don't worry. I needed thread to stitch those towels together."

"Some of the threads went flying, and they're already gone."

She shrugged. "Worth it for this water to stay so _clean_. I thought we were going to have to find a river, but this is so convenient!

"What have you got there, cub?" the Mom asked, seeing that Regis was standing there. He didn't quite like how her voice went from competent and assured to shy the moment she spoke to him. Reminded of his presence, the werewolves who had gotten back to work instead of staring at him glanced at him again.

"Sleeping clothes I grew out of." Instantly he had the full attention of the half of the room that had gotten back to work already. He was aware there was color on his cheeks, but it was more inelegant to be ashamed of things than to be startled, so he didn't turn away because of it. "I also have day clothes. Where do I bring them?"

"I'll take you," she said, nudging her stack of clothes she was working on over to her son. "Thank you sir," she said, pushing him along not physically but by moving so he had to move to not enter her personal space until she was past him and he could follow. "I was going to cut down one of the outfits we found in the room for my daughter, but my last needle broke. If you wouldn't mind putting them down here." She patted a counter that already had some clothing on it – he could tell it was noble because it had different colors. Everything the werewolves had was this off-white that seemed more plain than white somehow. "Do you know what the rules are about hunting? We're going to need the bone for more needles."

"There are needles in the manor. Some of my cousins made clothes."

"Did they?" she chuckled. "Good thing I didn't send someone hunting yet. If it weren't for the fact that so much needs to be done now, I'd be too afraid to do much of anything. Will they be angry about the washing rocks? They were my idea." Her teeth were pressing down on her lip, not enough to draw blood, in worry.

Regis' face twisted, because that was weird. "This place is for you. There's no point in making it if you're not going to use it."

"…This place is going to take some adjusting to, but that's a good thing, I think. Makes it harder to fall into old habits if they just don't work here." She took a deep breath. "Can I ask you a favor, sir?"

"Of course."

"Of course I can ask, or of course you'll do it for me?" she asked gently.

"Of course I'll do it for you," he said.

That got a quick little laugh from her. He frowned: he didn't like being laughed at, but it made her seem less tired for a moment. "I heard it's rude for nobles to talk and make noise, but if you would, would you talk to us?"

He wrinkled his nose, but asking why would be inelegant.

"You're powerful, all the nobles here are. Even the weak ones, because you've been the Lord's people for longer, and a good Lord makes their people strong. Our people are going to be afraid of offending you, maybe even think that she'll favor your people the way _he_ favored the warriors, even though we know she's better than _him_. We're so used to hiding in our dens… Listen. You can hear the children playing through the walls."

Oooooh. That was the happy screaming.

"I haven't heard that in centuries," she said wistfully. "I couldn't teach my son to do laundry because I didn't want him walking around outside more than he had to. They want young men most, for the experiments. I wanted them to think he was a cub as long as I could hide him…." She saw his face and looked at him apologetically. "I shouldn't be saying things like that around a child, but we had to. You're a cub, so it's hard to be scared of you, even if you're family of that clan leader. Your grandfather used to spank Maduke's warriors when they abused the humans, you know. We were telling those stories on the ship, so… but I shouldn't keep you, if there's more clothing. The children will get rowdy soon, we'll need to let them run around the forest to reward them for not breaking that nice bath…"

This wasn't rowdy?

The Mom was walking away briskly, almost fleeing. He didn't go after, not when she was embarrassed about how talkative she'd been. But if it would help them to be talkative, then he would just have to bear it.

Regis nodded to himself and started to go back to the manor.

If the werewolves wanted to hear them talk, then hearing the clan leader talk about fighting the bad werewolves would be educational, not noisy, and it sounded like the werewolves would like to hear that too? After he got the clothes, though. If the cubs were going to get even noisier, then they needed to be able to go into the woods so they didn't disturb the clan leader.

He heard growling from one of the windows. "It's mine!" someone else yelled, and then two werewolves came crashing through a third story window and rolling around on the ground with something between them. Regis couldn't see much but colors and the light reflecting off little patches, like mica, as they tumbled on the grass.

Three werewolves jumped down off the roof and more came out of the manor door and the bathhouse behind Regis.

The brown werewolf and two of the roof werewolves looked at each other and jumped in, tearing the combatants apart. Bits flew everywhere.

"Noooo!" one of them screamed, the other whimpering, reaching out with claws that were still embedded in the remains of the… whatever it was.

" _If we were back there,_ " one of the roof wolves growled, roughly shaking the one they held. "Do you know how terrified my brother would be right now? You're his last grandcub!"

"It's…"

"It's ruined!" the other cried, glaring. "This is all your fault! I found it first!"

"We're supposed to take clothes to our families, for them to decide and trade!"

"I can have two outfits! They said! And you weren't going to turn it in either, I know you weren't!"

The growling started up again, and now one of the werewolves holding them was growling in frustration.

"What even is this? It's not camouflage."

"Well, that depends where you are," Gejutel said, finally revealing himself and ignoring how some of the werewolves shrank back, although expecting him to punish all of them because two misbehaved. "Humans have worn a lot of things over the millennia. But that doesn't look quite like something they're wearing now, although it's been awhile since I've been in the field…" He peered at it, the brown one holding it up helpfully. "Ah!" he realized. "It's one of the wealthy human costumes confiscated from those criminals a few centuries ago. Good to see the Knights were making some headway cleaning out the old evidence lockers."

"Sir Gejutel, about the troublemakers…"

"I usually made my clan repair the wall." Everyone looked at the manor wall and tried to figure out how that would even be accomplished without noble powers, not without the patch being glaringly obvious. Gejutel walked over and waved a hand up at the hole instead, closing it up. "Does anyone have chores that need doing?"

"I'll find something for them, sir." The brown one glared. "How dare you disturb him when he's been so kind and offered us his protection…"

"There was more clothing like that in the lockers. One of you could go down to the knight station to ask if they've got any more clothing they can spare in the old lockers."

Gejutel had both the young werewolves' attention instantly.

"The Knights are a bit understaffed," now the Landegre were gone, except the clan leader and Regis and Regis was too young. "I'm sure they could use a couple more pairs of hands sorting through the lockers for anything useful. And while human fashions change, I'm sure somewhere in the world they're still making colorful fabric in elaborate patterns, and the Central Order Knights are in charge of the supply runs to the human world. I'm sure they wouldn't mind fetching you something in return for your assistance."

"Thank you, sir. Now, you two! Apologize for damaging his house and thank him!"

The clan leader chuckled. "There's no need to apologize. They're what, three hundred? I know what werewolves are like at that age. My own clan is famously rather stubborn, so this is far from the first time this has happened. It doesn't seem as though anything important was damaged, but next time, do take it to the training grounds. What if there were cubs in the building?"

They both bowed their heads with apologetic whimpers.

The brown one cupped her hands to her mouth. "I'm proposing a new rule: fight outside!"

"Right."

"I guess… It should be safe to fight outside here, the Lord said so."

"Yeah, _they_ didn't care if we wrecked our stuff, but if we fight in our host's home?"

"We're going to have to do something about the pages."

Pages? Not like in books… "You have a word for werewolves like Rael?" Regis asked the one that spoke.

They turned with an 'who me?' expression. It took a moment for them to answer him. "What age is this Rael, sir?"

"Four hundred. He's utterly inelegant. You said 'do something' about them. What do you do with them?"

"In the old days, we had them fight until they were too exhausted to fight anyone else," said Mom. "That does sound nice…"

"I'm afraid that with the loss of my clan, and the Loyard Clan, the knights _are_ too few to do their duties of protecting the island and patrolling the human world to keep that organization of those who have betrayed humanity from throwing their weight around," Gejutel said thoughtfully. "I'm sure you're all busy settling in right now, but Kei Ru already volunteered his clan to help train you, and the Knights wouldn't mind teaching you how to patrol and defend the noncombatants in an area, even if you don't intend to join. Once you can take care of protecting yourselves, that's fewer civilians to worry about whenever the traitors return."

"Do they guard the Lord?"

Gejutel shook his head. "That's the duty of the clan leaders."

"Lord Raskreia is powerful," one of the ones without ears said, "but what if… I don't want to think of someone like Kuharu even getting close enough to challenge her. Muzaka didn't permit it, but before then warriors were allowed to accompany the Werewolf Lord to challenge anyone who looked like they were going to challenge our Lord, if we wanted them to remain Lord. It _used_ to be our right to decide who we wanted to protect us."

"Who we _didn't_ want," the brown one added. Regis would like proper introductions, but he wasn't sure how he should ask their names when they already knew his. They didn't seem to use it much, so perhaps werewolves didn't? He needed to ask the clan leader.

* * *

 _I think that Rael was a bad influence on Regis, in that having to bluntly tell him no and being exposed to that level of ridiculous used up all of Regis' ability not to comment when people were being idiots/weird/inelegant._

 _Before Maduke, werewolves roamed all over the world – I doubt Muzaka was unique, given that 'solitary with large ranges' was how Frankenstein described the werewolf lifestyle – this probably made it easy for Maduke to take out Muzaka's loyalists without any werewolf witnesses able to warn the others. Werewolves also had a big work and learning ethic due to the training focus._

 _So whenever recontact happens, anthropologists are going to love them both for what they know about how humans in various areas lived at various periods, but their knowledge of_ crafts _. Judging by M-21, obtaining replacement clothing may have been a constant concern for werewolves, and with centuries of experience they probably got very, very good at fibercrafts._

 _Wearing something elaborate may have been a sign of skill (and trust that you were at least a good enough fighter to strip and throw your clothes to safety quickly if challenged). The warriors might have had simple clothing as a sign of monkish dedication to training, but part of the reason those two cubs were WANTWANTWANT over elaborate brocade is that it's what their parents wore when the cubs were too young to remember, before Maduke banned (or made it extremely unwise to wear) too human/decadent/weak clothing._

 _Between dedicated craftspeople squeeing over being able to do what they love again and parents wanting to give their children the nice things they couldn't before, werewolf fashion on Lukedonia is going to have an extremely elaborate and experimental phase. The nobles will be going 'ah good they're imposing their wills on their surroundings and controlling their own bodies and appearances,' so they'll probably encourage it as Healthy even if not necessarily elegant._


	6. Chapter 6

Ludis looked up from the latest report book when there was a knock on his door. "Come in."

The knight came in followed by three werewolves and saluted, reporting that, "Sir Ludis, Sir Gejutel sent us two werewolves who have volunteered to help sort through the closed case evidence lockers. He also wants to know if we will consider training werewolves who are considering joining the Central Order Knights."

"If Sir Gejutel thinks that it's a good idea," Ludis said, a little confused that he was being asked under those circumstances. Sir Gejutel might have passed on his co-command of the Central Order Knights to Rousare, but with Rousare in eternal sleep Ludis had expected him to resume the post. "I'll start drawing up a training plan." Gejutel would be the main instructor of course, but the werewolves could use some colleagues to demonstrate who were closer to their level, so they weren't comparing themselves to a clan leader.

Then again, even if he was always willing to train people to protect themselves, Gejutel might not return to the knights. Not when the Landegre members of the Central Order Knights were in eternal sleep, leaving the knights reduced to the home and coast guards, which were Ludis' domain as Mergas clan leader. He also had a child that he was responsible for, and a great number of werewolves.

Perhaps if werewolves joined the Central Order Knights, then Gejutel would be able to fulfill new and old responsibilities at once by returning to the organization? Without the Landegre running missions, their share of the paperwork had gone down by a lot, but Ludis was doing all of it right now, while trying to find out if there were any traditions or precedents remotely applicable to the Lord also being Werewolf Lord.

He smiled at them. "I'm Ludis Mergas, clan leader of the Mergas Clan, Lukedonian Minster of Defense and Co-Commander of the Central Order Knights."

"I'm Garune," the oldest werewolf said, stepping in front of the other two. "These are Lirin and Sirik."

"Sir," Sirik said, bowing nervously. He was one of the earless werewolves: his face was round and chubby like a young human child's. He was wearing a Central Order Knight's uniform with the insignia taken off so he wasn't impersonating an officer. It was large enough for him around the middle, but it was sized for someone with much bigger shoulders and arms and it showed.

Lirin had her fingers pressed together: she looked as though she'd just gone through a growth spurt and hadn't added enough mass to her body to look proportional yet. That had to be an old set of Regis' clothes that she was wearing: they left much of her stomach and lower legs bare.

They both looked like children, one in clothes they would have outgrown if they were eating enough and the other shoved into adult's clothing they weren't big enough for yet. Did werewolf forms change as their self-concept changed, like nobles, did they grow like humans, or would they stay like this? Either way, wearing clothing that made them look weak and inexperienced was very inelegant. "Would you mind if I changed your clothing?" he asked them. "Even without the insignias, there might be some confusion, and the fit is distracting."

Both of them looked interested, but only Sirik started to take his clothes off.

"That won't be necessary," Ludis said quickly, taking the disrobing as consent and hurriedly waving a hand. He stuck to the insignia-less uniform design overall, but with silver instead of gold piping for a trainee. He was pleased to see it matched the young werewolf's fur.

"Yes please sir," Lirin said, after seeing the results.

Ludis smiled at her and did the same, lengthening her clothes and trying to add some room for growth just in case. She still looked very young and scrawny – it reminded Ludis of Rael, come to think of it.

"Sorry about that," he told them. "You'll hear the word 'inelegant' a lot. We use it when something's wrong in a way that bothers us. Those clothes didn't suit you, so they looked wrong on you because they weren't something you would have picked. It's very distracting, and the knights need to focus on their duties, so being inelegant on duty is prohibited. Please do your best while you're in the HQ."

"Yes sir, and thank you!" Sirik said.

"The Landegre were in charge of investigations," they had been since eight hundred years or so ago, "and they were the ones checking which of the old evidence we didn't need anymore, but there should be someone who worked with them." He looked at the knight who had escorted the three werewolves in. "Please show these two around and help them track down whoever they should talk to."

"Sir." The knight bowed and left, followed by the younger werewolves.

"Sir Mergas?" asked the one adult werewolf.

"Yes, Garune?" He was used to Sir Ludis: most of the knights were much older than he was, and Sir Mergas was still his parent to many of them.

"Sir Landegre said that you were The Shield of the Lord and Guardian of the Sanctuary, and responsible for protecting the Lord?"

"Traditionally, yes," Ludis said. "Unfortunately, when half the clan leaders betrayed us the Lord had to assign their duties to other clan leaders. The Lord had us reduce the guard on the sanctuary to give us time for everything else." According to Mother, the Previous Lord remained in the Lord's Hall almost all the time, leaving perhaps once every few centuries. There was always at least one clan leader in there to guard him, usually her or Sir Gejutel. Ludis, on the other hand, needed to study things his mother had known for millennia and Sir Rousare was kept busy keeping the human organization from abusing their power as much as they wanted to. Their Lord did study, which made Ludis feel a bit better about his inexperience, but she went through the archived reports and new additions to the Mergas' library once a century.

A century's worth of Ludis and Rousare scrambling to keep up with the paperwork, and books Ludis was constantly behind on. It took her an afternoon, turning the pages of the books while taking verbal reports from Ludis and Rousare and questioning them on the trends she found in the reports.

Ludis was aware that the humans associated his clan with knowledge because of his mother. He tried his best to complete her duties and be an adequate replacement for her as Mergas clan leader, but that was the difference between a clan leader and Lord.

"Does our Lord go without a bodyguard? What about Sir Ru?"

"The Ru clan's duty is to focus on training exclusively, so they can be ready if they're needed for something like the Lord traveling outside Lukedonia." Until the Lord summoned them all together, Ludis hadn't expected to see Kei Ru until the Five Hundredth Anniversary of the Previous Lord's eternal sleep.

"Like the warriors…" She looked nervous.

Ludis wanted to say that Kei would never betray everyone like the werewolf warriors had, none of the younger clan leaders had betrayed the Lord… but Ignes Kravei would have, if her father hadn't, and she'd spent a lot of time with Rael, heir of the Kertia Clan.

"Could we guard our Lord?" she asked.

That hadn't occurred to him, but it wasn't a bad idea. "Only clan leaders can enter the Lord's Hall: there's always one of us there when she's in the hall. I haven't been able to figure out what to do when she's not on the throne," he confessed. "It would be an insult to her dignity to send one of the Central Order Knights, when they're my subordinates." And even if you'd have to be an idiot to attack the Lord, someone who tried it would have to be strong enough to force a non-pureblood into eternal sleep. "And having a weaker noble nearby would make it difficult for the Lord to defend herself. She would have to hold back so she didn't send them to eternal sleep was well as the attacker."

"We can heal," the werewolf told him. "We weren't able to train and grow strong before, because if we grew strong enough to survive a lot of damage we made better test subjects. No one did unless they wanted to join the warriors." And the warriors had betrayed the werewolves like the clan leaders who didn't enter eternal sleep betrayed the nobles.

Except Sir Gejutel, of course.

"We still remember how to train our regeneration ability. If we become strong enough that we're not a burden to her, will you let us protect our Lord?"

'Our Lord,' a reminder that Raskreia was their Lord too.

Ludis couldn't help smiling again: he'd given his loyalty to Raskreia too, and he wasn't the only one who wanted her to remain Lord. "Erga Kinesis di Raskreia is the Lord; you'll have to convince her, but I would appreciate it if you can. Her father was always attended by at least one clan leader, but our Lord won't let us protect her when we should be protecting the people of Lukedonia. That includes you now, too." When their traitors might try to take them back, the way the traitor clan leaders had already taken too much from Lukedonia.

* * *

"Sorry, little miss." The sailor tried to smile. "This has to be rough on you." After she lost her family, too.

Miss Seira shook her head, seated by his bedside. "Humans called the Loyard the gods and goddesses of death." So sitting with him was something she did for herself, as part of her duty, not for gratitude.

Not that he'd be in any shape to be grateful for much longer.

* * *

Raskreia had thought it would take perhaps five years for the werewolves and humans to be settled in, and then she could return to dealing with the traitors. Given how much her father liked them, humans had to be very difficult, but the difficulty should have been keeping them from convincing her nobles to give them contracts to help them fight the human organization.

Instead, it seemed the humans whose souls the Union violated might never get the chance to fight back.

This irked her.

Of course she was the Lord of the nobles and they were her responsibility, not humans or a human organization, but she could not permit her nobles to exist in a world where stripping away someone's will could go unpunished.

"It is not a poison," Claudia reported, and when Raskreia accepted her word she retreated to stand half behind Gejutel.

Seira remained genuflected, throwing herself and those she wished to protect on the Lord's mercy, trusting in her wisdom.

"I cannot heal them," Seira had confessed. "They do not know what healed is."

According to Gejutel, this happened as humans aged, but Raskreia would have noticed a temporal distortion around them. It seemed the Union had damaged something that kept humans from dying even sooner than they already did. From their books, the humans seemed to suspect their bodies had some blueprint, but what it was, or how to repair it?

"Lord." Gejutel kneeled now.

"You may speak."

"I must ask your permission to pass down Regasus to Regis and enter the Forbidden Zone."

"Explain, Gejutel K. Landegre."

"Frankenstein experimented on humans and nobles and gained a great deal of dark knowledge. He may have left books behind in the Noblesse's manor. However, many have tried to steal from Frankenstein in the past, including the human organization. His secrets will be well-guarded."

Meaning Gejutel expected to enter eternal sleep seeking them. He could not stand by while those Seira wished to protect died helplessly, especially when he had already protected them once, by taking them from the human organization.

She couldn't let him seek information the human organization would want unsupervised. "Ludis Mergas." His shield would make it possible.

* * *

"These books explain a lot, Lord. He discovered that humans were made out of cells centuries before the humans did."

She _knew_ that Frankenstein was intelligent, almost as smart as her. It was why he, not just his Master, was competition for her father's favor. Cadis Etrama di Raizel would have made a pathetic Lord, Frankenstein might possibly have been capable of doing the job. "Is there anything that might prove useful?"

"Ah, yes." Ludis bowed. "Most of the information there is about nobles, of course." When Frankenstein was a noble himself and he'd left this behind a clue that only Gejutel and Ragar would know. "I suspect Frankenstein had at least one contract, he seems very well informed about humans. Almost an inside perspective. One of the books is on human healing techniques. It contains an introduction addressed to Gejutel and Ragar. He assumed that Gejutel would give up and try to find the book against Frankenstein's stated wishes centuries ago, his language is… disrespectful." Ludis blushed a little. "It explains the blueprint used to create and maintain human bodies, as a foundation to everything else. There are poisons that can cause rapid aging, and how to treat them. And comments on Gejutel's appearance."

She kept watching him, face impassive.

"He mentioned there are ways to repair that blueprint without noble power, but didn't write any of them down. He said that if nobles – any noble besides himself – knew how affect that blueprint, we'd just break it. The most likely explanation for the sailors' aging is that something has damaged the structures that shield the blueprint. With the proper equipment, we can take a cell from them, see if the shields are intact, and if they are not find a human cell where they are intact and copy that part. It seems as though it should take too long, when there are so many cells in the human body," and humans didn't live that long, especially these humans. "But done properly, he thinks a noble's power can do it all at once… or that it would reflect badly on the noble if they can't manage that."

"I will need to see the books." The werewolves had collected Maduke's research, and she had already read through it for the sake of her new subjects, but there was nothing in there meant to _help_ humans.

* * *

"Gejutel."

"Yes, Lord."

"Did you know that Frankenstein was a human."

"Yes, although it wasn't unusual for nobles to mistake him for one of us. I suspect that was deliberate."

"Did you know that _he_ made an illegal contract with a human."

"With your father's approval, Lord."

"So the Law did not apply to _him?"_

"…He was dying, Lord. Frankenstein, for all his sins, was a master of healing. Much seemed coincidental at the time, but for a cold-blooded killer like Frankenstein to change his ways, and instead seek to save lives seemed to be the work of the Lord. Although most of it can be attributed to Frankenstein finding Cadis Etrama di Raizel quite comely."

Ah yes, human men were supposed to go utterly insane when they found someone attractive. If she took her father's word for it. That _would_ explain Frankenstein, although given what she had heard about his character before he met _him_ , it would be more accurate to say he'd been driven _differently_ insane by lust.

…Had her father favored Cadis Etrama di Raizel as much as she thought, if he allowed a human male to do things to _him_?

* * *

"Sir Rael!"

Half of the immature werewolves on the beach instantly abandoned their efforts to ruin Regis' hair when the first to see him squealed his name.

Rael didn't admit it to himself, but he couldn't help being pleased and flattered. He was here because his brother approved, and Seira surely would too.

Once she came of age.

Rael wasn't Ignes Kravei.

Sir Karias waved.

"How can they tolerate him?" Regis wondered, staring. He couldn't even see Rael among all the werewolves. Not that he minded this, but, _Rael?_

"He's powerful, but non-threatening and fluffy," Sir Karias told Regis. "They can get him utterly off-balance with one little compliment. You think someone as powerful as a pure-blooded noble would have let them get away with this back there?"

Regis touched his hair protectively. "Why Rael instead of you?"

"I may be young at heart, but I'm still the adult here. And I have a soul weapon. They're still a little scared of me, _but_ that just makes it mean more when I give them flowers! That someone strong thinks they deserve nice things. That will help tide them over until they learn not to listen to me." That they didn't need to listen to someone or give them respect just because they were strong.

There were two kinds of respect: the kind you gave fellow people, and the kind you gave superiors. Karias had been impressed by the Previous Lord's vendetta against the entire concept of the second kind, and wanted to carry it on.

This wasn't the time, though.

Karias held his fingers to his lips and whistled loudly. Rael and the werewolves all turned to look at him. "Alright kids, time to go on home to Landegre Manor. Regis, I'm putting you in charge of making sure they get there safe. Rael, I need you to find your brother, and then the Lord. Let them know that we've got Lagus, Gradeus, Edian and some werewolves incoming. Edian's aura is messed up, the only thing I can compare it to is what I've heard about false contracts."

Muzure, Linrai and Ushimang all grabbed on to Rael, white as sheets.

"Don't worry, kids," he told them. "But your parents are going to be worried if you're still out here when the manor wards go up, so hurry on home, okay?" He smiled, even though Rozaria hadn't been able to reset Landegre Manor's wards yet, not when there were so many werewolves who needed keys, and Lagus had been able to get past the wards since before the current manor was built, according to Gejutel. They hadn't thought Lagus would come personally to back up some werewolves.

Well, time to get airborne. Lucky he'd worked on curving arrows, so he should be able to make them think he was shooting from over _there_ instead of here where the kids were. Well, he'd be over there in a minute, same thing.

It was a pain to have to train only once a day at a specific time, but it _was_ handy that the Knights knew that if Amore started up any other time, they needed to get moving.

He was aiming for Gradeus first, hoping he'd recklessly charge ahead of the others. Gradeus was so noisy when he fought that it was hard to miss that his aura hung around in the air after he was injured, a crude imitation of Big Sis' blood field. If Karias could draw Gradeus away from wherever he got injured, he'd leave that blood behind and Karias wouldn't have to worry about fighting him somewhere saturated with his power.

Also, Gradeus couldn't dodge worth a damn. It was almost embarrassing for the Bluster clan leader to be hitting such an easy target, but Rousare was in charge of talking to humans and that meant he was willing to actually socialize to get some practice in. Karias didn't know if Gradeus was the one to force him into eternal sleep away from Regis, but just in case he was Karias was going to do his best to get to be the one to take him down.

Karias had never sensed Edian spar before she left the island, which was a little odd, but there were plenty of other Drosia. They could move faster than Kertia, but only when they were charging short distances. Not a problem next to the Elenor: if it weren't for the fact he'd sensed so many of them training he had a feeling for how they positioned themselves, it would be hard to lead a target that could teleport.

Tradio had a knack for materializing things – their clan style involved creating acid and attacking with projections like the Elenor threw fire at you, but neither clan could use that in the Central Order Knights because they could get deployed among the humans and humans didn't do well when poisoned and set on fire. Sure, Lagus Tradio's brain must have rotted in his skull for him to think Big Sis didn't deserve to be Lord, but throwing up a shield to intercept arrows would be a no-brainer. That was why the goal was to get Gradeus to split up the party.

He was conserving power for now: the arrows just needed to sting, to _annoy_ , and Gradeus had underestimated Karias since before Karias was made (the 'peacock' clan couldn't put their claws where their feathers were, according to him?). Karias wanted to send him to eternal sleep still thinking that Karias was weak, because that way Gradeus would spend eternity dreaming of how he got his ass kicked by a weakling.

A familiar aura appeared next to him. "Hey, Rozaria," he greeted her, maintaining fire. She ignored him, circle already appearing around her.

Normally, two clan leaders fighting together was absolutely out of the question. Their generation _especially_ wouldn't do that to each other: the traitors implied that they were weak, they weren't going to imply their peers were weak like the traitors had! Then two of their own were forced into eternal sleep, and _Karias and Rozaria were made responsible for children._

It made sense: Big Sis was wise, 'course she was. He and Rozaria weren't supposed to let the enemy touch them, and they needed to stay intact for Seira and Regis' sake. Now, though, they had to be able to keep the enemy not just from reaching _them_ , but reaching the kids as well, and forcing another noble to teleport along with her took a lot out of Rozaria.

It wasn't weakness to put personal pride aside for the sake of children, it was strength. So he'd been able to flatter Rozaria and Gejutel into putting their heads together to figure out a battle plan for That Idiot Karias, and if it turned into figuring out how to work together, it was for the children.

The Bluster had an instinct for relationships. Not just hearts and auras, but where people and objects in the world around them were moving relative to each other. Growing closer, breaking up… When a member of his clan was training another Bluster, they'd spot for them, describing the motions that got the arrow where it was supposed to go until it clicked for the kid. He'd tried to teach some of it to Regis, because it would be _really nice_ if he used Regasus as a distance weapon _the way Rousare hadn't_ , but his powers hadn't been able to locate a clue anywhere in the vicinity of the confused pureblood kid. Landegre knew where _they_ stood: the rest of the world was its own business unless it got in a Landegre's way.

Elenor like Rozaria understood space, though – they needed it to teleport. And there was some kind of motion involved in the difference between creating fire and creating ice, but what was important was that humans kept creating languages, and the humans had recently come up with a language that could properly express positioning and movement. It took a bit to get it out of Ludis' book haul (…and now Rousare wouldn't be bringing them back, someone else would need to pick them out…), but once the language was in his head, Rozaria didn't take long to pick it up.

Unfortunately it wasn't going to be that easy to teach Regis to speak Calculus: he didn't experience the right sensations to match to the equations, unlike him and Rozaria.

Elenor normally didn't have good enough aim to hit a target too many miles away. Bluster didn't have much of a problem figuring out how to hit on something.

He said a couple sentences. When he launched the third arrow, Blood Witch fired.

"She's down. Nice." Wow, Karias envied her that damage output. He could train to overcome his weakness at short range, but how difficult it was for him to do a bunch of damage all at once was going to be a problem if any werewolves closed in on him.

"Why Edian Drosia?"

"Do _you_ know anything about how she fights?" Karias asked her, because he didn't and this wasn't the time for surprises.

"Point taken." Rozaria was frowning. Edian Drosia was a bit of a nonentity when they were growing up. Gradeus' moves were easy to predict, but none of them had a clue about her.

Other than she might be an easier target than Lagus Tradio. Lagus Tradio was a grandfather to everyone and then the Lord returned with the werewolves and had the authority to do the highly inelegant thing of not giving Claudia Tradio her space. Gejutel made kids stronger. Lagus Tradio and his child…

Lagus Tradio was _evil Gejutel_.

Karias wasn't planning to go anywhere near that, thanks. And not just because if he was nearby, Big Sis wouldn't be able to do her stuff… "She's still there."

Rozaria stared at him, her cheeks starting to color. All that work, all that training, all that _noise,_ the precaution of firing while Edian was inside someone's manor, even if the manor had belonged to a traitor,and the enemy was getting up after a direct hit from Blood Witch.

"Lagus Tradio stepped into the debris while it was still falling. Edian's aura… Maybe it has something to do with how Tradio's aura is all over her."

"I should report to the Lord. If they can survive hits that should be fatal…"

"Gradeus is starting to launch attacks in random directions. I should give him something to aim at before one of those travels far enough to hit someone." Karias' Bluster sensibilities wanted to say no way that was happening, Gradeus' aim was _offensively_ nonexistent, but there were fragile people down there. "Oh hey Ludis."

"Karias!" The Mergas clan head glared at him. "Have you been kiting him all over the island? _Look_ at all that damage!"

"Sorry Ludis, but I already attacked him, it's my fight now. And Rozaria has dibs on Drosia if we can get her away from Lagus."

" _I_ am the protector of Lukedonia! That means _I_ have dibs on all fights against invaders!"

"No offense Ludis, but aren't you and Gradeus like the worst possible match-up?" Bad as putting a Kertia against a werewolf – their fighting style only did shallow wounds, and that would make things easy for werewolf regeneration.

Ludis stared at him for a second, before curiosity and caution won out over insult. "What… do you mean?" There was a slight tone of warning, because if Karias was putting him on?

Karias kind of stared at him, because Ludis was the one always dragging up trivia… right. "There wouldn't be books on that clan's techniques, huh."

"I'll trade you Edian," Rozaria said, before there was any risk of Karias wasting more of everyone's time, or worse. It might not be a waste.

"That works!" Karias agreed happily. Ludis' shielding should give him a chance to hang around and observe Edian's fighting style until he knew how to counterattack. "She's splitting up from Lagus for some reason. The werewolves already scattered."

If Karias kept Gradeus moving, then he wouldn't have the advantage of his pseudo blood field. Not if he left the blood behind. Even if he was within it, it just made him more powerful – and Karias wasn't a Kertia, but distance made it much easier to not get hit. The problem was that Gradeus' wild swings could hit someone, so Ludis was right, Karias couldn't let Gradeus chase him all over Lukedonia. They'd have to head out to sea. It was a good thing those ships out there didn't still have humans on them.


	7. Chapter 7

_I should be doing fight scenes, but I have had a bad case of 'but I don't wanna' after doing Tree of Thoth's. It burnt me out on them more than a bit._

* * *

The humans overran the planet.

Then they started destroying it.

The place the humans became humans: they turned it into a desert. The place the humans built their first cities: they turned it into a desert.

The other nobles had no particular reason to notice, but the Landegre, who took the form of herbivores, and the Tradio, who took the form of plants, watched it happen and knew exactly why it was happening.

Gejutel didn't really care.

It was in the nature of humans to destroy things. What could be done about it? You couldn't force people to go against their natures. It wasn't as though the nobles had a right to stick their noses in when _they didn't need to eat_. It was the humans' business what they did with the planet that gave them life, the humans' problem when they ran out of food, because it was one they were perfectly capable of solving themselves, or _stop causing themselves_ , and the Lords agreed.

Lagus Tradio used to love his friend dearly, but after Urokai fought that Frankenstein, speaking to Gejutel and Ragar, Ragar had mentioned that he had spoken up when it was clear that Frankenstein was about to force Urokai into eternal sleep and asked if perhaps he and Gejutel should do something? And Gejutel wondered what was wrong with nobles these days. Not only because Urokai underestimated a human with access to abilities like those of nobles, but because Ragar thought saving someone's life was reason to intervene in another clan leader's fight and keep Urokai from getting what he'd asked for.

The Landegre simply didn't care about a great many things. That was why he'd arranged for Urokai and Zarga to destroy that clan: they were not a good influence on Lukedonia. Not at all. Not if you cared about anyone's survival.

The previous Noblesse saw the danger, but Raizel was soft. It wasn't as though they hadn't known that. A Noblesse that interacted with people without reminding them that they would be killed if they ceased to be entirely honorable was an anamoly and he was fairly certain the Previous Lord was responsible, tampering with the system. At least they got one proper Noblesse out of it, dedicated to the survival of the Nobles, but Raizel was… defective.

He'd executed one noble who preyed on humans, but that noble contributed to the blood crystal research out of greed, not for the good of the nobles. They'd made plans so that Raizel would be comfortable after his brother used up his entire soul destroying the humans and werewolves. The blood crystal their Noblesse could have used to save his own life was left for Raizel.

None of them blamed Raizel for stopping him, not when he did it for the honor of the nobles. He'd been kept too sheltered to know better. That was why they'd given him credit for their actions, even after he had to be put down. Let a Noblesse be credited with the salvation of the nobles, so Raizel wasn't remembered as nothing but a defective product, a mad Lord's attempt to sabotage the only check against his power.

Raskreia was that mad Lord's creation, and then he had her exposed to that Frankenstein. It was a pity, but the Lords were too clever. She would have to be sent to peaceful eternal slumber before she learned to use her power as more than a blunt instrument.

Then she went to Maduke's island.

 _And the island was still there_.

How? She was what, a thousand?

 _Frankenstein_.

He'd learned to use the power a human could get its hands on to become dangerous enough to kill clan leaders. Powers that no one had ever used before, because they hadn't existed until he created them, and he was able to devise techniques as good as those passed down from clan leader to clan leader. Had _he_ studied Raskreia's powers and devised a way for her to use them to destroy a castle but not the island it stood on?

The alternative was almost worse: that she had used nothing but a blood field, mind control and a bit of telekinesis, and an escort of two of those infant clan leaders was enough to do the rest.

They weren't going to have enough respect for their elders for him to prove he was wiser than Raskreia to them for much longer, not when their example of an elder noble was Gejutel. Not when killing the two young clan leaders (with heirs!) would have cemented them as traitors in the eyes of those children.

There was very little time left, otherwise he would have waited until he was able to make more blood crystals. He was so close, and the number of humans was constantly increasing, it would be good for them to cull their numbers. Give them more time until they needed to be destroyed.

Not that he expected Gejutel to understand. Or care.

* * *

"How! How am I losing to a child!"

"Your strength is considerable, and that regeneration is a problem," Kei Ru said to his opponent, even knowing that regeneration was at work while he spoke. "But that power... of course you can't wield it when it's not yours."

"What?"

"My parent taught me to emulate the discipline of the werewolf warriors, but after facing your claws I know: you are no warrior. You abandoned your training along with your honor. A warrior's strength exists to protect the family, as the strength of the Ru exists to protect the Lord."

His opponent had told the other werewolves to run ahead and get started on the mission: he wanted a chance to duel the Ru clan leader. Kei shouldn't complain, when those who had betrayed the werewolves for power had no honor. If the others had stayed, he was sure they would jump in the moment their leader was in over his head, and Kei would _need_ that moment to land a decisive blow if he was going to defeat this foe in spite of werewolf regeneration.

The clan had scattered, taking the werewolves who had joined them for training with them. Kei was grateful, otherwise he would have had a harder time ordering his people to retreat in the face of an enemy that threatened the weak.

He could already see the steps required to kill this werewolf in his mind's eye. He should try to persuade the werewolf that he should go home and live, that otherwise he was already dead, but there were other werewolves out there. The traitors like this one, and the innocent.

For their sake, this werewolf would have to die.

The cold-blooded decision that in order for others to live, someone, even a traitor, would have to be forced into eternal sleep… Kei should not regret it.

He felt… sullied, somehow. This werewolf was childish, had no understanding of battle. This werewolf was no warrior. Battle should be warrior against warrior… but this was no warrior. And that was why he had to die, for the Family he betrayed to live in peace.

* * *

Seira sat in the rose garden with a cup of tea and sighed.

Regis' shoulders slumped, where he stood pouring a cup of tea for one of the invalids out in the garden to get some sun, which was apparently good for humans. Not too much, or it burned them.

It was an important duty to protect the humans Seira was responsible for. Rael vanishing the instant Rajak's back was turned was yet more proof if it was necessary that this was where they should stay. Even if Seira was a clan leader and could join the battle. Even if Regis had his own fragile people to protect, at his own clan manor.

But Seira had to stay or Regis would not, and when Lukedonia was attacked by werewolf traitors and noble traitors, could they really take the risk that human traitors might have come as well, to recapture their slaves?

The humans were very fragile, especially sick like this… It was too dangerous for the Central Order Knights, with clan leaders invading. Ill humans, who wouldn't even be able to run…

Unless.

Seira nodded, decision made, and stood.

* * *

Rajak was not strong enough yet to fight alongside the Lord. With an incomplete awakening, he was too fragile. She would be unable to fight with her true strength for fear of sending him to eternal sleep. He would have to train even harder, to keep his weakness from interfering with his duty a second time.

At least he was tying up two of the werewolf warriors and keeping them from coming to the assistance of Lagus Tradio or attacking the Lord's new subjects. He had gone to eliminate the spy Karias had kept pinned down while he was gone, too injured to regenerate and report to her masters, and this Kuharu had followed him, intruding on Kaiyo's battle with no regard for her pride for the sake of a battle with the 'infant' Kertia clan leader.

He wished to prove his superiority over an infant? Rajak did not think that would prove _anything_ good, but he wouldn't disgrace himself with talkativeness with enemies in front of him.

Kaiyo was watching the battle – Kuharu had demanded she do so because otherwise his peers might not believe him. Rajak was not especially worried she might join the battle – she was too slow. Yes, she had a stealth ability, but he was a Kertia and he had been studying it for months. What concerned him was Kuharu's regeneration. The Kertia clan's fighting style lended itself to weak strikes, because they couldn't take the risk of being pinned down by an opponent and losing the advantage of speed. If Kuharu's regeneration was even a little stronger, Rajak would have been facing an opponent he could not defeat.

As it was, if he defeated Kuharu, he would then face Kaiyo, who was taking this opportunity to observe his fighting style, surely. He would have to survive the battle uninjured enough to survive his battle with her, or Rael would inherit Kartias and become a target during this invasion, with no time to master using a complete soul weapon.

He did not see a way to accomplish that without proving them right, in what they said about his clan. He would have to hide. He could not give Kuharu a fair chance.

But he had seen the werewolves. The pitiful little bundles that were all they had to bring with them. The clothing made of scraps, their desperate effort to have some dignity and elegance. The gratitude and respect in their eyes when they bowed before the Lord.

Compared to these werewolves, who betrayed their Family, who caused that suffering… They did not have the right to question Rajak's honor.

* * *

Lagus laughed. "Don't think you can get through to her. I had to leave her her own will as long as the Noblesse was here, but once we eliminated him, I could turn her into a more obedient puppet."

Looking at Edian Drosia, Erga Kinesis di Raskreia saw red.

* * *

"Where are the others?" Kentas asked Mount.

"They stopped to kill clan leaders, they'll catch up soon."

Lunark ignored them, keeping eye contact with her own opponent, daring him to charge at her. That idiot Urokai Agvain managed to kill the last one who had that soul weapon, but she couldn't take chances with so many werewolves in the building behind him.

"Go away!"

"We won't let you take us back there!"

"Traitors! You served Maduke, you don't deserve to call yourselves warriors!"

"Shut up, weaklings!" Mount yelled, pouting, and took a swipe at the building.

The old noble turned his soul weapon to face him – Lunark lunged, but misjudged how much the noble would accelerate once the soul weapon's attack began. Her swipe sent dirt and clods of grass flying up to hit the side of the building and some of the werewolves in the windows.

So easily? But this wasn't one of the infant nobles, too young to have even started to master their powers. This was an old warrior.

Who didn't have an attack charged anymore.

Her claws' swipes were slashed and dispersed by another noble with two knives: the Kertia clan leader.

"Ah, so you didn't forget your father gave you that," said the first clan leader, beginning to gather power again.

The noble jerked, startled. "What?"

"Well, you were only forty. Human memories aren't very good at that age. Your brother was worried that you never used it in training, but didn't want to imply you weren't capable of summoning your soul weapon."

"My… brother?"

Gejutel frowned. "Did Ragar… You _did_ know that your parent told your brother why he would have an incomplete soul weapon?"

"He knows that it's because of me?" the noble looked terrified.

"…I should have known Ragar wouldn't give a very good explanation."

Right! "Are the clan leaders so young and ignorant they think it's alright to interfere in someone else's fight?"

"Are the werewolf warriors so young and ignorant they think it's acceptable for one of their number to try to kill defenseless members of the family?" The Landegre snorted. "I told the Previous Lord he needed to let us do something about you children slaughtering defenseless humans. Leave it to Muzaka, he said. The werewolves are a sovereign people just like humans, he said. In _my_ day we vaporized… No, I won't insult the warriors who attacked humans so their families could live by comparing them to scum who betrayed the werewolves for _power_."

What? It was only recently that the humans were becoming strong enough they might become a threat to the werewolf warriors and their Lord. She wasn't going to ask and betray ignorance.

"A _true_ warrior would grit their teeth and thank Rael for saving the lives of members of your family."

She couldn't help drawing in a breath when she realized he was right. "It's because of you nobles that our people are even here! You're the one putting them in danger."

"…I suppose I can't say that the nobles are any better than you when half the clan leaders betrayed us to ally with those who betrayed humanity. But you do have a point." He turned to the younger noble. "Rael, start carrying them away from here."

Whines and growls of protest from the werewolves in the windows.

"I am protecting you in the name of my child, who died rather than let noble traitors slaughter humans. It would be inelegant of me to do the same when there is a child to think of, but I can't allow you to get caught up in this battle either."

"Are you trying to shame these traitors into remembering their honor?" Rael demanded. "What honor? Scum like them have no shame! They're the same as the scum that forced Seira's family into eternal sleep!"

"Hey!" Kentas protested.

"I know it's hard to give up on family," the clan leader said, ignoring her companion. "But you have the family that lived with the constant threat of death rather than betray you to think of."

Lunark drew her lips back from her teeth, because risking death to protect the family, that was what she did, going among those _humans_ in the Union. How dare he imply that she was staying safe while the werewolves who weren't training to protect the family were the ones putting themselves in danger for the family?

But it still stung, how some of them closed their eyes in mourning, turned away from the windows, from her and Kentas.

"You were the only ones who didn't accept the power they got from slaughtering us!" a werewolf she remembered cringing as he reported to Maduke yelled. "We thought you were different, but you're no better than the rest of them! We have a real Lord now, who defeated the Lord who was killing our family!"

Another blond noble carrying two knives unblurred into visibility next to the one that was already here. "These are the last werewolf infiltrators on the island," he told the Landegre clan leader. "Sir Ru is approaching – the others have gone to maintain a barrier around the Lord's battlefield."

Suddenly with a scream of twisting, tearing rock, the entire island jerked under them.

"And this is why traditionally the clan leaders don't allow our Lords to handle challenges themselves," the old clan leader said, shaking his head. "We lose more islands that way." He remained standing still effortlessly through the aftershocks, the other two nobles wobbling a bit until they started hovering a bit off the ground.

"She's _not_ our Lord!" Kentas insisted.

"The Lord is at least the seventh non-werewolf to be Werewolf Lord!" the old man insisted, looking insulted. "You _true_ Lords went on raid after raid for the sake of the family! Did you think it was _rare_ for them to die, when they became Lord knowing that they would one day sacrifice themselves for the family? We used to use whoever managed to kill one as bait, because another werewolf could only become Lord by taking the right to control the fate of werewolves back from the enemy." He looked disgusted. "And here you are, terrorizing your family instead of facing an enemy you cannot defeat. Your ancestors would have refused to eat rather than have descendants like you."

Eat? Werewolves didn't need to eat. What on earth was this noble talking about?

At least the clan leaders didn't seem to know either, but they were _children?_ Lunark was an adult and a warrior.

The older-looking blond clan leader summoned his soul weapon again. "Should we bring them to the Lord now that she has defeated the traitors?"

"Is that the Lord's order?" Gejutel asked, swinging Regasus forward. "Well, she is Lord, she has every right to destroy Lukedonia."

The other two clan leaders stared at him in shock. The elder got himself under control again in a second, while the younger stood there big-eyed, which was an expression she hadn't seen on a noble before. The old man looked at them, clearly thinking, "What?" because to his mind he hadn't said anything that merited that kind of reaction. Then he seemed to realize and laughed in a grandfatherly way.

Where were Kuharu, Kaiyo and the others?

Was the young noble _serious_ when he said all of them had been defeated? Her and Kentas against three clan leaders (or nobles with soul weapons at least) suddenly didn't seem like good odds, especially when the Lord could turn her attention to them.

Say they won, and were able to force at least some of the werewolves to come with them before other nobles got here, or the Lord herself. If one, or even if both of them survived, the werewolves would look weak and the Union would pounce. When they had more warriors than there were Union elders that was one thing, but now… Using the clan leaders to defend the family might be the only way for the werewolves to survive until they had a new generation of warriors. "I want to discuss terms. Surrender terms," she forced out when the younger nobles looked at her with no idea what she was talking about.

None of them looked relieved they'd get to avoid a fight with werewolf warriors: in fact the old man scowled before he remembered, "Our Lord won't just let you go the way the Previous Lord did. Releasing you to the will of the Werewolf Lord won't let you escape justice when she is the Werewolf Lord."


	8. Chapter 8

The noble lord looked down at the werewolves from her throne feeling slightly miffed. Hopefully they would assume it was because of the invasion and not because she most likely wasn't going to get to kill these two for what they allowed to happen to their people. Or perhaps they might respect her desire for violence – _her_ werewolves seemed to, elegant or not.

Allowing those with power, but so irresponsible in using it, around the werewolves? The werewolves were her responsibility now, she could not allow them to live in fear of these two. Or worse, if an _incident_ occurred, it might destroy their ability to feel safe here. She would attend to other business while she _considered_ the matter of the Fifth Elder and Kentas.

(Let them sweat, knowing their life or eternal sleep rested in the hands of a Lord who did not care for them. Let them suffer that uncertainty as their people had suffered. Not that her hands _were_ uncaring – unlike Maduke, she was a competent Lord, and a competent Lord _did their job_.)

"Kertia," she said, after the last of her clan leaders made it into the throne room.

"Casualty reports are still coming in, but the humans estimate that thousands died in the tsunami, Lord."

Narrowing her eyes, Raskreia tapped a finger on the arm of her throne. A pity that she would be forced to delay sending Zarga Siriana and Urokai Agvain – and Roctis Kravei as well, when the werewolves had revealed he was part of that organization of traitors – to follow the loyal clan leaders into eternal sleep until she had gained more control over her temper.

Or.

Seira had dealt with the problem of a battle near humans by making the humans less fragile. Frankenstein's books hinted that there were ways to accomplish that without a contract – he was older than many of her clan leaders before he even met _him_. If the humans didn't die so easily, then she would be able to fight in the human world without worrying about them.

They did have a lot of dying humans on Lukedonia – Seira hadn't made contracts with _all_ of them, just the ones too sick to run. Humans should handle human affairs – if only they had the strength, they could come along with her and deal with the human members of the Union.

Raskreia was maybe just a little worried. Look what happened when she killed those who betrayed the werewolves for power: she had one more clan to worry about. There were _billions_ of humans, and if they were anything like Frankenstein, she was very, very grateful her ancestors had enforced their law that no one was to rule humans but humans. She had enough to worry about with just the nobles, she thought, regarding Karias.

Once she had a formula for letting humans survive a decent amount of time, perhaps she could send it to them as a formal apology for the lapse in her self-control. It wouldn't hurt for the humans to be constantly reminded that they had this gift because of not only her intelligence (and therefore fitness to be Lord), but the sheer power of her wrath.

As for the new island itself, her parent taught her that new volcanic islands were covered in life in the blink of an eye. It shouldn't take long for the island she'd made in the trench near Lukedonia to be presentable, and then she could give it to the werewolves, so they had their own home island again and didn't need to feel that they were intruders or had no choice but to stay in others' territory because they had none of their own.

She was certain that many of them would choose to stay with Gejutel and the Ru Clan, but what mattered was _choice_ , for the werewolves to be acting in accordance with their own wills instead of feeling that their wills did not matter when they had no alternatives.

This would have to wait until the island was attractive, of course (although Raskreia herself quite appreciated the stark black and red of cooling lava). Otherwise they might feel they were unwanted, for her to hint that they should take themselves off Lukedonia, exiled to some barren rock. Perhaps Rajak could be ordered to find flowers (scented ones, for werewolves) and such to help make the island attractive to a people who had standards of beauty focused less on elegance. Perhaps the humans would have some advice for him on what made for a beautiful volcanic island.

"Mergas."

"Yes, Lord?" Ludis said, coming to attention.

"The petition from the werewolves you presented to me is granted. Whenever I am outside the castle's shielding, I will allow four of your Knights to accompany me to handle annoyances. At least two of them must be able to conjure shields." She wouldn't need to tell Ludis to drill them in conjuring shields _quickly_ , so they would be able to suppress the energy she radiated even a _little_ to reduce the damage until she regained control if she lost her temper again.

"According to Sir Gejutel, some werewolves can turn their power into shields, Lord."

She nodded: good. That way, the werewolves could feel they served a purpose even though Raskreia didn't need protection. In fact, most of the world's population needed protection from her.

Was that why her father almost never left the castle?

That would be unacceptable, when she had an island to survey and plan for. She would have to put some thought into how best to make sure she didn't lose her temper again. Preventing the traitors and the human organization from doing as they pleased because the Landegre were no longer traveling out there to stop them would be a start.

* * *

Standing on the peak of the mountain, Sirik gripped Rael's arm. "So all this time when you left Lukedonia on missions without telling me anything…"

"Not _all_ of them," Rael said, realizing after he spoke that his fellow knight wouldn't insult him by implying he was a child who wouldn't be sent on real missions. Not when Rael was part of the Lord's honor guard along with Sirik. "My brother did entrust this to me, because I spent a lot of time training your family, so I was in a position to gather intelligence on what you might appreciate."

The werewolf looked down the mountain, seeing the ground covered in blossoming trees. "It's beautiful. All of this, for us?"

"The Lord made it, of course she wouldn't let it go to waste." A lot of noise for no purpose would be inelegant. "Well?"

"Oh!" Sirik remembered that Rael had asked Sirik to give him the werewolf's opinion on something before spiriting him away from the island. "It's beautiful," he said again. "There's no way the others won't appreciate all the work you did."

Rael considered saying he'd just fetched some plants and they did the rest of it themselves, but he didn't mind the werewolf looking down at him with starry eyes. "Humans put colorful paper and ribbons on gifts," he said, meaning it was only to be expected. Flowering plants were the practical thing when the gift was an island, even if it was perhaps a tenth the size of Lukedonia.

"Nobles and werewolves don't," Sirik reminded him, then looked out at the island again. "Maybe we should, now that we can get our hands on paper and make ribbons…"

"So they'll like it?" Rael asked, because that was why he'd brought Sirik here before the island was presented to the werewolves on the twentieth anniversary of their coming to Lukedonia.

Sirik swallowed, met Rael's eyes and nodded. A blush colored his cheeks, under the furred markings that had started to grow in soon after he started training with Ludis' knights.

Well. Getting Sirik's opinion as a werewolf of the island's presentation was _half_ the reason Rael had brought him here, just the two of them alone on a flowering island. Sir Karias was Sir Karias, but he _did_ have some good advice on how to conduct a romance.

Wind in the trees, sound of the waves, slightly high-pitched roaring in the distance along with the humming or crackling of aura attacks and the soft booms of rapid blows and people hitting the ground. Recess at Gejutel's school was very noisy, because the clan leader knew that werewolves needed plenty of training if they were going to sit still during lessons, but it wasn't bad, that noise. The noise of happy children Rael had helped protect filled him with pride.

The smile on Sirik's face was even cuter when he realized that Rael was listening to something and paid attention to the background noise. That deeper roar had to be Mr. Kentas correcting some child's form.

Werewolves didn't consider relationships proper until the age of five hundred at least, but that was alright. Rael only had a few decades to go and he was so _busy,_ with even the Lord relying on him now, and it wasn't as though he didn't spend plenty of time with Sirik already, between duty and training.

The werewolf family was more or less a clan, and a clan should have a soul weapon. That way, they could make their own petitions to the Lord – Ludis had dug up that the reason only clan leaders could enter the throne room was that only Awakened nobles could survive being in a room with walls that would reflect back so much of the power if the Lord became enraged. Yes, the Lord did make time to visit them and hear what they wished to tell her, but that kind of informality compared to the nobles wasn't elegant, and the werewolves shouldn't have to put up with being inelegant anymore.

Rajak knew Rael would always be loyal to the Kertia Clan, but Rael was going to have to join Sirik's family and bring Grandia with him. His brother agreed that it was the proper course of action.

* * *

"Things have changed while I was asleep," Master said.

"Yes," Frankenstein agreed, smiling with relief. "Humans are immortal now." And couples were having fewer children, because the amount of land to inherit wasn't infinite. It made education very important, because young people had to compete with people with sixty years of experience for jobs. The advance in technology recently made it easier for the young: they didn't have anything to unlearn about how to do things. A school like Ye Ran could command any price – many couples taught frugality by the Great Depression had started saving up for their first child in the nineteen fifties, after the world had a few decades of scarcity of both jobs and resources to motivate parents to give their children better childhoods than they had.

It galled him a little that a noble was able to succeed where he (a human) failed, but at least the work got done and Raskreia was clearly inspired by the books he'd left behind, so when the truth was revealed he could still point out that it would have been impossible without human effort and merit.

* * *

Staring at the wreckage-strewn crater that was all that remained of Master's manor after Rozaria's battle with Edian, Frankenstein made a choked-off noise that was not a whimper, not in front of a noble.

Master quickly began to pat him on the shoulder.

* * *

"Cadis Etrama di Raizel."

The noble turned to look at her.

"I am Werewolf Lord as well as Noble Lord. You defeated me soundly in our spar just now."

She saw alarm in his eyes as he realized what she meant. "I decline," he said quickly.

She narrowed her eyes at this defiance, but she simply said, "The Werewolves deserve better than another Lord who refuses the responsibility of being Werewolf Lord," so her guards could relax. Of course they knew she wouldn't let _Raizel_ have them – as the humans put it, he couldn't lead his way out of a wet paper bag, if he could even _find_ his way out – but the Sanctuary was almost in ruins. And, more importantly, she still was no match for Raizel. Challenging him again to ensure the safety of the werewolves might send her to eternal sleep, and then who would look after her people?

She couldn't institute a democracy when campaigning would be _noisy_ and nobles would dislike anyone who did it _._ At least the werewolves were willing to elect a school board, a village council and their training ground managers. They and the humans adopted into the Loyard Clan were also willing to use the currency she'd created, so at least Lukedonia had a functioning economy even if it was an uphill battle to get nobles to participate in any exchange of goods and services that would get them talking to each other, working together and resolving problems and differences of opinion.

"And no nobles can hold positions of responsibility without first graduating from school," she told him. "Whatever your duties as noblesse are, by my authority fulfilling them will have to wait until you have graduated."

He nodded.

What. That was too easy.

"My master attends a school I created in the human world," Frankenstein said with another bow.

He _had_ to be doing that just to rile her up – they both knew that Frankenstein wasn't that respectful unless there was a barb in it somewhere. "Send the curriculum to Sir Gejutel: he will judge whether or not it is acceptable."

Frankenstein almost choked. "Gejutel, judging what _I_ teach _my_ Master…" Wisps of dark energy rose from him.

"Frankenstein. The full moon will set soon."

"…Yes, Master."

They came to the Lord's sanctuary on a full moon.

"That Lord said that he left a message for me here," Raizel explained.

She nodded, giving him permission to reach out with his powers.

She'd begun to think that her father's dislike of the idea of her liking males was one of his jokes, or one of the things he did just because humans sometimes did them and he liked the idea for some reason, but he was so insistent…

Then again, he was quite certain that Muzaka wasn't a problem she needed to concern herself with, and look how _that_ turned out. Planning optimal futures for two species was very concerning.

* * *

 _Rai thinks that a year (the kids are seniors, I believe) is nothing, so it's not worth fighting over. Unfortunately for him, events will move fast when he's not allowed to execute people… He'll have to skip a lot of fights and have additional clan leaders there to inspect his education (and help out when the household is attacked)._

 _Raskreia's formula gave youth and increased ability to heal damage or not take it in the first place. It didn't buff strength. I'll leave it to your imagination what immunity to disease and bullets did for oppressed people's ability to tell colonial powers ruling by force to eff off. The majority of the population (Raskreia didn't just give it to governments when governments were terrified of the Union) not_ needing _food, water or shelter also did a number on economic means of control, or 'your life (hours, poor health from overwork) or your life (I don't give you money and you die).'_

 _I go with the idea that nobles find 'needs' where you might_ have _to do something against your will because otherwise you die absolutely squicky because to their species having to do something against your will is an ultimate violation/fate worse than death. So the fact that humanity having fewer needs meant there were a lot fewer ways to force us into things was absolutely intentional on Raskreia's part. People being able to say 'yeah I think not' to taking jobs without decent pay or treatment, etc. Or just pack up and leave toxic environments w/o worrying about where the next meal was coming from._

 _The economy Raskreia's trying to institute isn't quite a post-scarcity one (you can only have so many people on the training grounds before they start getting in each others' ways, and there's also wanting other people to do/make things for you). Nobles are much more willing to be producers than consumers, the problem is that if money flows in but not out, that wrecks your economy. Once things have settled down enough for more disruptive social engineering than just getting the werewolf and human enclaves stable, I could see Raskreia starting like a $1 tax just to make nobles participate in the economy_ at all _._

 _I could see nobles deciding that money is a lot less annoying to get than gratitude, provided you have something to_ do _with it so it doesn't keep taking up space. If there's a tax, at least you can give the extra to someone so they can pay their tax with it instead of needing to disrupt their life._

 _The Ru Clan and the Werewolves had enough cultural disconnect over what is and is not an imposition and who is doing who a favor that it was causing some people discomfort to think they were being unfair to the other group. Money ended up appealing as a way to keep score/have some measurement to check to be sure things were balancing out fairly._

 _The werewolf need for things – there's furniture on Lukedonia, how often do you think the person who made that gets to make new pieces that get used – plus the werewolves having something to hand over/give back so they don't feel like they're just taking stuff (when the nobles are 'take it, please, I have no space for it') would lead to a lot more craftwork taking place on Lukedonia, and werewolves wanting to learn crafts having people to apprentice to… Humans wanting individual designs after Union uniformity would create a larger market for werewolves doing experimental things with fiber crafts… More things would be 'what's an acceptable amount to tip' than set prices? Although set prices might be a polite thing to do so people don't have to guess._

 _Now I'm imagining a future werewolf with Grandia, which at that point would be what, 2/3 Rael? 'How dare you speak to my adopted child.'_


End file.
